Jesus On Taxeshttps://jesusontaxes.liberty.me
The worlds first nonviolent tax resister.Tue, 02 Jan 2018 15:49:26 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.4BEYOND NAPhttps://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/beyond-nap/
https://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/beyond-nap/#respondTue, 02 Jan 2018 15:49:26 +0000https://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/?p=157The Teacher of Galilee: A Seer Who Really Did See This guest post was written by anthropologist and longtime-libertarian, Spencer Heath MacCallum. Minor changes to the author’s original version were made to punctuation and formatting only. Read the original here: http://explorersfoundation.org/archive/maccallum-spencer-golden-rule.pdf A WAKE-UP CALL FOR CHRISTIAN LIBERTARIANS “How tantalizing,” economist William H. Peterson wrote some years ago, “to find that virtually all the world’s major religions exalt the Golden Rule in one way or another.” He reproduced the different wordings he had read as follows: CHRISTIANITY Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. JUDAISM Do not do to your fellow what is hateful to you. ISLAM No one is a believer until he desires for his brother what he desires for himself. BUDDHISM Do not hurt others in ways you would find hurtful. CONFUCIANISM Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you. The common wisdom is that all major religions teach the golden rule. This appeals, because it speaks to us of the brotherhood of man. But on examination, does this common affirmation not fall into that large catch bin of notions that are widely but mistakenly believed? Spencer Heath was fond of remarking that the positive version propounded by the teacher of Galilee was unique, and that its uniqueness carried profound implications. The Galilean’s precept was to: “Do unto others..,” whereas other great religious teachers counseled that men desist, indeed, that they refrain from doing. Seemingly a small difference? But how dramatic a difference! It heralds the transition from the ancient world with its many tribal divisions and parochial interests to today’s evolving world economy. This economy is lengthening our lives and vastly multiplying our resources and opportunities to lead a creative life, following the example set in Genesis. The teacher of Galilee was arguably a seer who really did see; for among all the world’s religious precepts, his alone is consonant with free enterprise. The vision of all others was that men should desist from the hurt they do one another, thus to escape the scourges of the ancient world. The Nazarene showed in a practical manner how to do that, and a whole lot more. He showed how to effectively overcome evil by displacing it with good. The free market process consists in people doing good for one another, not in refraining from harm as other religions counsel. We can be one hundred percent compliant with those other teachings while standing in our tracks and starving to death, and our neighbor starving also. Those other teachings are good counsel as far as they go, but they fail to rise above Benjamin Franklin’s aphorism that “honesty is the best policy.” It takes little reflection to see that merely being honest is not the whole story. It is incomplete as a prescription for free enterprise. Alone, it makes no history. Nor does merely wishing your neighbor well, as in Peterson’s Islamic example; however cherished as a sentiment, wishing alone doesn’t make it happen. Peterson came close to seeing the uniqueness of the Christian precept when he called the marketplace “the Golden Rule in action.” He couldn’t have said that of any of the others. Some prefer the negative precepts expressly because they are negative. They fear that the positive command might open the door to mischief, that it could be invoked to justify imposing one’s tastes on others. Am I, for example, who like curdled milk, called upon to serve it to you,who hate it? And what of the masochist? Any such interpretation of the Galilean precept makes nonsense of a rule intended to apply to everyone. The commandment of the Galilean admits of only one reading that can be universalized; for only the how of the doing, not the what, can be applied across the board. So we are enjoined to do unto others as we would have them do unto us, which means in a certain manner, namely, with regard for the other person’s wishes in the matter. And even the masochist wants that. So the Galilean teaching requires two things. It requires doing for others, and it requires granting others perfect freedom. Serving one another in perfect freedom is the market process. One serves another, and that service, if it is truly a service in the mind of the other, induces a reciprocity, a reciprocity that is wholly voluntary. Hence those practicing the rule live longer and more abundantly, as promised in holy writ. By way of contrast, there is no way to practice the negative rule. The version stated in the positive is the strict formula for private enterprise, the recipe in a nutshell. Has it ever been put more succinctly? Moses’ similar teaching, to love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19:18) was a lineal precursor and, significantly, was also stated in the positive. Moses’ putting his teaching in terms of feeling rather than of action was appropriate for a time in human experience when the cooperating group was small and face to face, heavily circumscribed by the amenities of kinship. Under such conditions, the nexus between feeling and reciprocal behavior was so close as to be virtually inseparable. But today, even though each of us continues to enjoy a circle of familiars with whom we interact on an intimate and psychological plane, the cooperating group is no longer familial. By the evolution of the free-market process, an evolution now accelerating at an exponential rate—the cooperating group has become global. We are rapidly learning how to serve and be served by strangers, persons we don’t know and never expect to know. The ancient rule expressed in terms of subjective feeling was appropriate among intimates, but it never could bring the stranger into the circle. The Galilean teacher overcame that limitation. It would seem that he in some manner intuited a creative destiny for humankind that was little evidenced in his day and is still only dimly seen. Others have anticipated that there is a destiny for mankind, such As Shelley in his poem “Queen Mab,” or the jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes when he wrote, “I think it not improbable that man, like the grub that prepares a chamber for the winged thing it never has seen but is to be, that man may have cosmic destinies that he does not understand.” But the teacher of Galilee articulated the all-important how of realizing that destiny, and he gave that destiny a name, “the kingdom of heaven.” It is all the more inspiring, and somewhat uncanny, how broadly the positive version of the golden rule harmonizes with Judeo-Christian teaching. What, after all, does the Bible promise as the reward for practicing the divine will but life abundant, even unto life everlasting. Today we are seeing the fruit of that rule: as men have begun learning how to practice the divine will universally, not just among intimates but with strangers to the ends of the earth through commerce, rationally and impersonally, thereby displacing the iron rule with the golden, we have more than doubled our life expectancy while vastly improving the conditions of our life. More and more, this allows us to become creators in our world, following finitely, perhaps, but with ever expanding capacity the example of God as told in Genesis. A skeptic might say, yes, business has all of these qualities. But it is also rapacious; don’t businessmen often join together to use the powers of government to restrict competition and exploit one another? The answer is that such predatory behavior, admittedly common, is no more practicing business than cheating at cards is playing the game of cards. None of the tragedies we suffer can be laid at the door of business. Properly considered, those are leftovers from ancient tyrannies that we are outgrowing as we learn to practice the golden rule universally. The blessings coming to us today are due to the spreading practice of that rule that we love one another not only as a sentiment but impersonally as well, and hence universally in the rational and measured behavior of the market place.We can now appreciate, in a broader sense, the passage where Jesus, having long before foresworn politics by saying, “Get thee behind me, Satan!,” gently rebuked his followers for arguing about who would be first in the kingdom of Heaven: “You know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise authority over them, and they that exercise authority call themselves benefactors. But it shall not be so with you. He who would be first among you must become the willing servant of all.” However unconscious the businessman may be of practicing the golden rule in his striving to serve the widest possible clientele, it is he more than any other who aspires to be the “willing servant of all.” If we have here a reasonable interpretation of Jesus’ gospel of the kingdom of heaven, why does the Christian tradition that has come down to us unlike the early Christian church stress a ghostly afterlife to the virtual exclusion of the earthly? History suggests the answer. The early Christian aversion to violence and taxation was a growing threat to Roman rule, and Constantine met it by using an old political ploy. He co-opted Christianity into the Empire. He decreed Christianity the official religion and appropriated substantial public funds for its church building and other material needs. From that time forward the Empire exerted a major influence on the development of the Church. Because political governments live not by the golden rule but by the iron rule of the sword, by taxation and war, having no other mode of survival, the Empire had little choice but to relegate the notion of the ‘kingdom of heaven’ to a far off, distant place. There are many levels on which one can love and appreciate the teacher of Galilee. Spencer Heath thought of him as a poet and a seer who really could see.one who had an intuition, divinely inspired if you wish, of what awaited humankind in the far distant future. That destiny would not simply behanded to men. It required a certain kind of behavior. And as the Gospels abundantly make clear, the carpenter’s son had a sure sense of what that behavior was. It was not likely an accident of phraseology that his rule calls for the behavior that, as men practice it not only among their intimates but with strangers universally, leads unerringly in the path of his intuitive anticipation of a ‘kingdom of heaven’ on the earth. Today we can begin to see, although still, perhaps, through a glass darkly, what in his day was in the far-off future. As the vision clears, however, it will inspire us to act consciously and increasingly in our god-like image. So what does this have to do with Christian Libertarians? Simply that the non-aggression principle (NAP) is well and good so far as it goes. But how far does it go? What power has it to inspire? It is not creative. It falls in the category of the negative versions of the golden rule, which is not to say that it either could be or should be discarded, because it is implicit in the positive wording. It is simply incomplete. So let us look beyond mere non-aggression to the positive, creative potential of the world now dawning. Let us look ahead to the principle of creativism, to creating a better world, a ‘heavenly kingdom’ on the earth and quite possibly beyond—not by doing to others what we think they should want, but by truly serving them through the free market process. Let us become entrepreneurs with a vision. Let us enter into business with imagination. Jesus’ positive rule is the divine command, if you wish. It is the way of life. This piece is distributed by the author according to a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/

]]>https://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/beyond-nap/feed/0GOOD BOOK, BAD BOOK, GREAT IDEA (Book Review, plus)https://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/good-book-bad-book-great-idea-book-review-plus/
https://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/good-book-bad-book-great-idea-book-review-plus/#respondSat, 02 Dec 2017 21:10:52 +0000https://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/?p=155THE HALF HAS NEVER BEEN TOLD: SLAVERY AND THE MAKING OF AMERICAN CAPITALISM INCLUDING BAPTIST’S AFTERWORD https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01HXM0R9Q/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 By Ned Netterville AMERICA’S HOLOCAUST After reading Baptist’s book, I’m convinced the most horrendous conditions any group of Americans ever endured was being forced to do back-breaking work as a slave, a “field hand,” on a cotton plantation in the South during the period 1790 to 1860, as often as not ending up being killed (murdered?) by those conditions. Baptist’s book is an excruciating expose of what it was like to endure and often succumb to the horrendous torture inflicted on those slaves to force them to produce ever more cotton. The book also highlights the many economic benefits from the slaves’ forced labor realized by all Americans and people throughout the world. And it chronicles the unwelcome consequences of slavery for young America, some of which persist. The Half includes never-before published, first-hand accounts from some slaves themselves telling what it was like to be owned and operated by means of overwhelming force and violence by another person for the other person’s profit. A GOOD BOOK Baptist shows that African-American slaves’ production of cotton grew at an exponential rate during the seven pertinent decades as their enslavers learned from the slaves themselves how best to exploit them to obtain their maximum output. The slave owners’ methods of increasing productivity through torture relied on total domination of both body, mind and family. Contributing to the slaves’ ever-increasing productivity throughout the period was their own mental and physical fortitude, creativity and tenacity in clearing wilderness fields, planting, cultivating and harvesting the cotton crop, and transporting 400-pound bales to the docks in New Orleans for shipment to the burgeoning cotton mills of England and New England. The fact that any slaves survived to tell about it is a wonder. Perhaps the cruelest irony of the slaves’ remarkable stories is that they never, until Baptist’s book, received credit for their astonishing achievement of continuously increasing their output of cotton under abominable conditions while the fruits of their labor were being stolen. Baptist shows that African-American slaves made cotton America’s number-one export and the world’s number-one commercial commodity. The enslavers’ pilfered profits became the primary source of hard cash and credit for all of America’s industries. Slave labor made it possible for New York City to embark on becoming the financial capital of the world, made cotton the most important economic product globally, made it the linchpin of the Industrial Revolution, and transformed the nascent American economy into the fastest growing engine of wealth among all the nations on earth. Every American then and now shared or shares in the benefits stolen from slaves, which continued to be withheld from their lawful heirs after slavery officially ended. Baptist is a professor of history at Cornell University. Although not an economist, his book includes a substantial amount of original research into the economic history of America’s cotton industry and the vital role it played in the nation’s economic development. His enumeration of the slaves’ contribution to the vibrant economy of young America serves as an indictment of many PhD economists who studied the same period, but failed to notice the crucial role enslaved African Americans played as they labored in the harsh environment of cotton fields while living in decrepit slave camps more suitable for cattle than people. (Note: Several economists have pilloried Baptist’s research. A scathing review of The Half (and three similarly themed books) by two Columbia University economics professors concludes with this rebuke: “As the NHC [the New History of Capitalism, a sarcastic designation] matures, it might embrace the enduring strengths of traditional historical scholarship, including citing sources correctly, conducting close (and accurate) readings, drawing inferences that are actually supported by the evidence, and integrating its findings into the broader historiography. It should also stop making stuff up.” http://web.law.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/microsites/law-economics-studies/olmstead_-_cotton_slavery_and_history_of_new_capitalism_131_nhc_28_sept_2016.pdf Baptist was able to tell his story of cotton and slaves because, under life-sapping conditions, some slaves survived to tell those stories, and of the millions who didn’t, some passed on to loved ones before slavery killed them their stories of what it was like to be kidnapped, sold, whipped and made to pick cotton, and if they had children, what it feels like to have them stolen at a young age, and sold afar where they knew a rabid overseer would whip them and make them pick cotton. Among Baptist’s best sources, he says, were African-American teachers he had known, descendants of slaves, who heard, preserved and retold the otherwise-untold other half of the story of slavery in America to their students in segregated schools throughout the South. If you are white like me, the odds are great that you never heard the slaves’ side of the story of America’s cotton-fueled prosperity, nor what it took from them to achieve it. I confess that before I read Baptist’s book, the only account I can recall reading that endeavored to portray the lives of slaves was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s didactic, romantic novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, whose protagonist, Tom, has metamorphosed from a hero among Northern abolitionist, black and white, in 1852 when the book was published, into a black on black epithet for an obsequious negro since about 1900. Because educating slaves was legally forbidden in most slave states, only a rare few became literate enough to write books. Ensuring slaves could not be educated was designed and served well to silence their voices. Baptist devoted over twelve years searching antebellum public records in the South, listening to the stories slaves told orally to their children who treasured them and retold them to successive generations, and by exploring the extensive archives of the Great-Depression-Era Works Progress Administration (WPA), which created jobs for writers, assigning them to record the memories of older Americans, including some who were born slaves and freed by Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation or by the Civil War. The Half Has Never Been Told was published in 2014. The 2016 paperback edition includes an Afterword. In it Edwards says the reason his book took twelve years to write was because, “I was attempting to rewrite the way we tell the story of U.S. history, at least up until 1865. I was trying to center American history on the exploitation, movement and disruption of African-American bodies, lives and families—all of which had been done for the sake of expanding a new, highly dynamic form of capitalism that eventually stretched from the field to the factory and back again.” BAD BOOK The Half argues that the expansion of slavery in both geography and intensity was what made American capitalism. “As I learned in my research,” Baptist argues, “there was a concrete relationship between African-American suffering and economic growth: the more that enslaved people were tortured, the more efficiently they produced the new global economy’s most essential commodity. Through the cotton the enslaved people made—cotton they were forced to make in an ever-more productive fashion—African Americans enriched almost all people of the world. Almost all people, but not themselves.” The book is a worthy addition to the genre, revisionist American history, but, unfortunately, not to the genre, economics nor the history of capitalism. Baptist’s intent was a noble, daunting goal. He succeeded in most of his stated objectives, but failed miserably in one that is crucial to his thesis, which severely detracts from the importance of his book. Though he employed the word “capitalism” repeatedly, he failed to define it. Unfortunately, capitalism has conflicting meanings to different people, particularly among people whose philosophical viewpoints are actuated by political ideologies. It is an unfortunate failure that discredits the author’s credentials as a conscientious, competent scholar. Baptist addressed the economics of slavery in America from a leftist’s perspective. In his Afterword he reveals himself to be a “progressive,” a confused scion of socialism, which has been is referred to as socialism-lite by detractors. Manifestly, the author came to the task of writing his book with a virulent, anti-capitalism bias. The following quote (p. 86) clearly demonstrates Baptist’s bias as well as his limited understanding of economics. “[E]ntrepreneurs,” he argues, “rarely create these benefits [viz., new technologies] themselves. Instead, they figure out how to reap their benefits in order to rip market share and profits away from other capitalists who are invested in status-quo technologies and staler business models. They are architects of the dynamic of “creative destruction” that iconoclast economist Joseph Schumpeter identified as the core engine of capitalism’s growth. Creative destruction produces wrenching shocks, devastating depressions following dramatic expansions, wars and conquests and enslavements.” The italics in the preceding paragraph are mine to emphasize the patently biased tone Baptist adopts in describing capitalism, making entrepreneurs sound like gangsters. In fact, the core engine of capitalism’s growth is freedom, a fact Professor Schumpeter might attest if he was alive. Entrepreneurs neither reap nor rip. In a capitalist economy; they envision or provide products and services people desire and voluntarily purchase. At times they produce things people desperately need. Not a single person has ever been enslaved by laissez faire, which is capitalism’s original French name, whereas millions are now enslaved (e.g., North Korea), and hundreds of millions have been enslaved by socialism (e.g., Soviet Union, Communist China, Nazi Germany, Khmer-Rouge Cambodia, etc., etc., etc.). Karl Marx would be proud of Baptist for writing this fantasy description of the work of entrepreneurs, and for connecting capitalism to slavery. Economist George Reisman, in his comprehensive analysis of capitalism wrote, “[I]t is a social system based on private ownership of the means of production. It is characterized by the pursuit of material self-interest under freedom and it rests on a foundation of the cultural influence of reason. Based on its foundations and essential nature, capitalism is further characterized by saving and capital accumulation, exchange of money, financial self-interest and the profit motive, the freedoms of economic competition and economic inequality, the price system, economic progress, and a harmony of material self-interests of all the individuals who participate in it.” [italics added for emphasis] (Capitalism, Jameson Books, Ottawa, IL, 1996, p. 19) Also available on the web in PDF: (https://www.capitalism.net/Capitalism/CAPITALISM_Internet.pdf) Thus, slavery and laissez faire are mutually exclusive concepts. By Reisman’s definition, Baptist’s claim that slavery “was what made American capitalism” is bogus. Had he understood capitalism as Reisman correctly defined it, he could not make such an absurd claim without sounding befuddled. African-American slaves did indeed contribute mightily to America’s economic growth and prosperity, as revealed by Baptist’s research, but an economic system incorporating slavery is not capitalism. Capitalism mixes the two major factors of production, labor and capital, to produce goods and services, thereby advancing human progress. The mixing takes place in the free market under the guidance of entrepreneurs. All free-market transactions are necessarily voluntary, including laborers’ voluntary exchange of their services for wages. Freedom and capitalism are inseparable. What Baptist calls American capitalism in The Half Has Never Been Told is statism, the polar opposite of capitalism rightly understood. Statism relies on force in place of the freedom required by capitalism. Socialism is the most common and virulent form of statism. America has always had a greater measure of statism than capitalism. The United States Constitution, which provided the legal framework for the slave-dependent social system Baptist describes, was designed and pushed through to ratification by men who were predominantly slave owners. Many among the others, as Baptist makes clear, were northerners who were indirectly enriched by the profits of the South’s cotton industry and slavery. It would be more honest to call such a system “crony capitalism,” as many people today refer to the matured system begot by the United States Constitution. However, crony statism is what it really was back then and is now. Many comments by Baptist in his Afterword persuade me he is “a progressive,” and, more likely than not, a socialist.” Here are some remarks of his that lead to that conclusion: “African Americans, as well as progressives in general, increasingly felt frustrated after two Obama victories [because his administrations] yielded nothing but rising class differentiation.” And this: “Thomas Picketty’s, Capital in the Twenty First Century…was a surprise runaway hit because it spoke directly to the reality [upward redistribution of wealth] many were experiencing.” And this: “They [historians and economists] assumed, in accordance with centuries of modern economists stretching back through Karl Marx and Adam Smith, that slave labor was essentially static.” People who approvingly cite Picketty’s compilation of egregiously flawed statistics and faulty analyses are generally, like Picketty, socialists. Those who equate Karl Marx with Adam Smith, and refer to Marx as an economist, are either committed socialists, or they haven’t read The Wealth of Nations (Smith) nor Das Kapital (Marx), the respective authors’ major works. These weighty tomes prove conclusively that Smith was a genius, and Marx, as an economist, was clueless. What likely induced Baptist to add his Afterword was a truly ignorant review of his book in The Economist. “Almost all of the blacks in his books are victims,” the reviewer wrote, “almost all of the whites are villains. That is not history; it is advocacy.” In that and other similarly insensitive remarks, the reviewer implicitly defended enslavers as against slaves. The response that followed the review was so incensed and intense the editors quickly retracted it and apologized. “People around the Internet,” Baptist reflects, “abused and ridiculed the review, the anonymous reviewer, and the Economist itself.” The brouhaha over the review generated a flurry of interest in The Half beyond academia, its most likely audience. The discredited review and viral reaction to it sold many books for Baptist. A fragrant response to a putrid review from Baptist’s perspective. Prior to The Half Has Never Been Told, other historians have endeavored to blame slavery’s expansion on capitalism. Economics Professor Mark Thorton, a Senior Fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute and editor of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, published an article in The Review of Austrian Economics, no. 2 (1994): pp. 21–47 entitled “Slavery, Profitability and the Market Process.” The article was a review of Robert Fogel’s and Stanley Engerman’s 1974 book, Time on the Cross. I reference it here because Thorton’s article contains brief commentaries on many of the important contributions to the genre, revisionist economic histories of slavery in the New World. Among them, Time on the Cross had the greatest impact. Although Thorton’s article was published long before Baptist’s book, its concluding sentence, rebutting the thesis of Time on the Cross, can as well be said of Baptist’s anti-capitalist theme in The Half Has Never Been Told: “Not only is the ‘free market’ exonerated from the evil of slavery,” Thorton wrote, “but the full blame for slavery and even the Civil War is placed back on government.” (https://slideblast.com/the-review-of-austrian-economics-volume-7-number-2pdf_5965d9bb1723dde74fc518fb.html) While Baptist’s book exhibits little understanding of economic theory, and fails to link slavery to capitalism except by unsupported assertions, it is nevertheless an important, eye-opening history of slavery in America under the enslavers’ Constitution. By no means does Baptist exonerate the federal government for its role in slavery. In his examination and assessment of the role of slave-produced cotton in America, Baptist demonstrates persuasively that slaves were of fundamental importance in the development of the United States into the economic juggernaut it is today. But it wasn’t and isn’t capitalism. If America had been capitalist then or now, today’s juggernaut would look like an economic wuss by comparison, because of the productivity true capitalism makes possible. Baptist opened a window into the personal stories of slaves as they would tell them if they could, stories of unspeakable cruelty and suffering like nothing else in the American experience. As Baptist stresses in his Afterword, their stories speak of an unbroken will to survive by dint of resources drawn from the depths of their humanity, which white people have never been forced to call on. The experience of surviving American slavery has given the African-American community a unique appreciation for their freedom, and, as Baptist says, “made still more precious the possibility that choice and love and pride and bodies and spirits could one day live unconstrained.” As Baptist makes clear, that hasn’t happened yet for many descendants of slaves, nor, I would add, for most Americans. The same federal government that embraced and sustained slavery for all those decades, today employs milder violence and coercion against its subjects to force them to surrender as much as half of their earnings in taxes to support a ruling class of politicians, bureaucrats, cronies and a toxic Military Industrial Complex. A GOOD IDEA In his Afterword, Baptist speaks approvingly of Ta-Nehesi Coates’s, “The Case For Reparations,” an essay published in May 2014 by The Atlantic magazine. While cogently demonstrating a compelling case for reparations being paid by the nation to atone for the enslavement of African Americans, Coates wrote, “Broach the topic of reparations today and a barrage of questions inevitably follows: Who will be paid? How much will they be paid? Who will pay?” (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/) These and other practicalities, not the justice of making reparations, are the impediments preventing their implementation. Coates also wrote, “Perhaps no number can fully capture the multi-century plunder of black people in America. Perhaps the number is so large that it can’t be imagined, let alone calculated and dispensed. But I believe that wrestling publicly with these questions matters as much as—if not more than—the specific answers that might be produced.” Baptist obviously agrees, as do I. Perhaps unlike Baptist or Coates, I believe substantial reparations to African-Americans descended from slaves, U.S. citizens long denied their “unalienable rights,” are realistically possible, economically wise, and entirely justified There are about 40 million African-Americans in the U.S. The federal government, the entity responsible for America’s slavery, owns approximately $128 trillion in on-and-offshore oil and gas resources, about 640 million acres of land, 45,192 buildings, 261 million ounces of gold, and mineral rights on 2.5 billion acres on and offshore. These are assets worth enough money when liquidated to make substantial reparation payments to every descendant of America’s slaves. Along with formal apologies from Congress, the President and the Supreme Court, which all played roles in denying blacks their freedom, monetary reparations would go a long way toward assuaging the nation’s guilt, and at least partially recompensing its black victims for the legalized looting of their forebears during centuries of injustice, which reverberates to the detriment of black Americans general welfare and white Americans’ moral rectitude. (Read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ essay in The Atlantic.) Counterintuitively, at least for those who do not understand the spiritual rewards to be derived from making amends for harm done, nor the many benefits derived from following the Golden Rule, paying reparations from the federal treasury would provide a massive stimulus to the U.S. economy and ignite an economic boom like nothing in America’s past, as mismanaged government assets moved into capable, profit-seeking private hands, and as reparation dollars were spent into the economy by the recipients. A stimulated, burgeoning economy would fully compensate taxpayers for the Treasury’s expenditure of money taxpayers will never lay their hands on anyway. The economic wisdom of disposing of government assets is elaborated in a recent article by Jeffrey Tucker on the Foundation for Economic Education’s website. (See: https://fee.org/articles/cities-are-selling-off-land-lot-by-lot/ )

]]>https://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/good-book-bad-book-great-idea-book-review-plus/feed/0JESUS NEVER PAID TAXES!https://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/jesus-never-paid-taxes/
https://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/jesus-never-paid-taxes/#respondWed, 01 Nov 2017 18:42:16 +0000https://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/?p=146JESUS NEVER PAID TAXES As was said by an itinerant-Internet preacher: “The Lord Jesus was also the only honest businessman in the world because he paid his taxes.” Dear Mr. Preacherman: That is a damn lie. There are lots of honest businessmen, and Jesus never paid his nor anyone else’s taxes. Taxation is theft. It is identical in every respect to the felony crime of extortion–except the state immunizes its collectors from prosecution. Paying an extortionist only ensures he will keep at it. The sophistry that denies taxation is theft would never fool Jesus. Especially in the first-century Roman Empire, taxes were a brutal form of extortion, impoverishing and causing many peasant Jews to lose their treasured lands, which the Hebrew Bible tells us was given to their ancestors by God Himself. Those who collect taxes cannot abide by Jesus’ two most famous principles: “Do to others what you would have them do to you,” and, “Love your neighbors as yourself.” Jesus would have no part in stealing people’s property and calling it taxation in hopes of avoiding one’s just deserts. And please do not cite Matthew 17 and argue Jesus paid the Temple tax. If you read that passage carefully you will see that the chapter ends before we learn whether Peter followed Jesus’ directions (he often did not), caught a fish with a coin in its mouth (Peter, a professional fisherman, probably thought Jesus was pulling his leg his instructions were so outlandish), and used the money to pay the Temple tax for Jesus and himself. As far as Matthew’s report of the incident goes, the tax could remain unpaid to this day, for the story ends before we learn what Peter did or did not do after Jesus told him to go fishing. Furthermore, if in fact Peter did follow through, caught a fish on his first cast with a coin in its mouth, and gave the money to the tax collectors, it still cannot in truth be said that Jesus paid the tax. For it was Peter who shot off his mouth, incurring an obligation Jesus would not have incurred; it was Peter who caught the fish with money in its mouth; and if he did follow through and give the coin to the tax collectors, it would have been Peter who handed the magic coin over to the tax collectors. This is certain from Matthew’s account: Peter didn’t get any money from Jesus to pay the tax. It makes more sense to say the fish paid the tax or Peter paid the tax. Clearly, Jesus did not and would not pay it. Furthermore, Jesus told Peter that as the son of God, the King of kings, he was–and by logical extension all of his disciples, children of God dwelling in the Kingdom of God are–exempt from human taxes. Finally, if in fact Jesus did conjure a coin in a fish’s mouth to pay a tax he did not owe in order to save Peter from the consequences of shooting off his big mouth before engaging his brain, and erroneously telling the tax collectors Jesus would pay the tax, it is all but certain that after Peter gave the magic coin to the tax collectors and received credit for having paid his and Jesus’ tax, the conjured coin would have vanish from the tax collectors’ coffers by the same magic by which it appeared in the fish’s mouth in the first place. Jesus would never provide real money to support Rome’s evil Empire or its pedophile emperor, Tiberius (see, http://www.historyextra.com/article/international-history/8-bloodiest-roman-emperors-history). As for Jesus’ brilliant retort to a question meant to trap him into revealing his well-known condemnation of Caesar’s tax, an incident reported in Matthew 22, Mark 12 and Luke 20, “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar,” means exactly what his words convey. Jesus didn’t mince words. So, if you have nothing in your possession belonging to Caesar–and no one in the Roman Empire ever did, for Caesar was a thief, not a lender or giver–Jesus’ explicit instructions are, “give Caesar nothing!” Jesus’ response confounded the “spies” who were sent to trap him, but it didn’t baffle his disciples, who knew exactly what he meant, for he had been saving tax collectors from their evil occupation since the inception of his ministry. (MK 2:13-17) And to make certain he wasn’t misunderstood, he added, “And give God what belongs to God.” Understanding that comment requires knowing what Jesus believed belongs to God and what belonged to Caesar. In this regard, Sacred Hebrew Scripture, by which Jesus consistently justified himself and his ministry, is unequivocal, for it states at least six time, as in Psalm 24 verse 1, “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it,” which leaves nothing for poor old Caesar, and nothing is precisely what Jesus would have his disciples voluntarily give to the ever-violent state. Dishonest “spies” were sent by members of the Temple hierarchy–chief priests, teachers of the law, Pharisees–to trick Jesus into condemning Caesar’s tax, which they knew he would do if he answered their entrapping question, “Is it lawful (according to God’s law) to pay Caesar’s tax? Should we pay or not?” (MK 12) When he responded as the priests were sure he would, “Don’t pay!” the spies were to immediately take him and hand him over to Pontus Pilate as an “illegal tax resister.” (That’s an IRS tem.) The Temple hierarchy was composed of men who had reached a mutually profitable accord with their Roman conquerors by assuring Rome they would see to it that their fellow Jews peacefully paid all their taxes. In exchange, the priests received a portion of the loot for themselves. and their co-conspirators, just as the Christian hierarchy began sharing in the lucre from Rome’s taxes after the Church was subsumed by the Empire during the reign of Constantine. Jesus’ brilliant retort to the stupid spies’ question so befuddled them that the Gospels tell us they were “amazed,” (MT and MK), or “astonished,” (LK). Instead of capturing him, they walked away shaking their heads. The spies’ handlers, however, were not fooled by Jesus’ cryptic denunciation of Caesar’s tax. When the dumb spies reported what Jesus had said to the priests, these well-educated men knew exactly what Jesus meant. So they next sent armed henchmen to take him by force in the Garden at Gethsemane, where Judas had informed them Jesus would be found apart from the worshipful throngs that had followed him to Jerusalem. The thugs seized Jesus violently, and the priests quickly dragged him before Pilate, the man responsible for collecting Rome’s taxes in Judea. Here, according to the Gospel of Luke (Ch. 23), is what they told Pilate about Jesus: “We found this man perverting our nation (viz., Rome), forbidding us to pay taxes to the emperor…” Is it any wonder Pilate crucified Jesus? Forbidding the payment of taxes was a capital offense in the Roman Empire.. The lie the Internet preacher told was not original with him. Christian-church scholars and leaders and government officials for almost 1700 years have been misinterpreting the “render unto Caesar incident,” and misrepresenting Jesus’ words, telling Christians, “Jesus said you should pay your taxes, and he thereby endorsed the concept of humans governing other humans by force (viz., the concept of empires and nation-states).” As a consequence of this gross deception, extortionary taxes were made a part of Christian doctrine, while immoral human governments, which Jesus would have no part of, have thrived on taxes. Without this gross dishonesty by the Christian hierarchy, a voluntary society not unlike the Kingdom of God Jesus preached, might have already emerged from the emaciated remains of nation-states, which had been starved of revenue by the righteous voices of Jesus’ enlightened disciples saying, “Pay no taxes!”

]]>https://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/jesus-never-paid-taxes/feed/0AN ODE TO IRWIN SCHIFFhttps://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/an-ode-to-irwin-schiff/
https://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/an-ode-to-irwin-schiff/#respondFri, 05 May 2017 03:04:25 +0000https://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/?p=129TOM PAINE, NATHAN HALE, PATRICK HENRY & IRWIN SCHIFF? What do these four Americans heroes have in common? They are all courageous American patriots of the highest order. But for raw courage in the face of ravenous enemies, Irwin Schiff stands head and shoulders above the other three. Author James Smith recently posted an article here at Liberty.me on the federal income tax. It is well worth reading. Here is the link to it; Its title is in the address: https://jamessmith.liberty.me/filing-taxes-is-only-slightly-more-preferable-than-prison/ I left a comment on his article. Here it is: Not for all of us. My number one American patriot hero is Irwin Schiff. He discovered that the income tax is a total, multi-faceted scam: an IRS scam in the manner of its collection, a Congress scam in the creation of the incomprehensible, 4-million word Internal Revenue Code, including congress critters (viz., Reps and Sens) and congress staffers; a U.S. Justice Department scam in its manner of prosecuting tax cases in federal courts; and a federal judiciary scam, including kangaroo-type-courts and their dishonest judges, including federal district courts, federal courts of appeal, and SCOTUS. When Schiff unraveled the plot of history’s all-time greatest fraud, he started writing books about it to share his knowledge with the general American public who were being ripped off by the income tax. In order to silence my hero after publishing his first whistleblowing book, the above mentioned federal thugs captured and imprisoned Schiff for two years–without benefit of a trial (only a kangaroo-court pseudo trial). While in prison Schiff wrote an even more explosive expose of the government’s income tax scam. So the thugs sent him to prison for four years. Again, in prison he wrote a comprehensive account of the scam and his persecution at the hands of the federal thugs, encouraging others to join him in courageously challenging the most feared agency in the world–the IRS–on the basis of the unlawful nature of the income tax. His words and deeds inspired enough other Americans to challenge the income tax so that their combined resistance began a small ($59+ million of taxes resisted) but frightening tax revolt–frightening, that is, for the all of the pigs feeding at the federal trough–because the revolt was growing exponentially. Threatened with potentially the complete loss of the lucre that was feathering their beds if the revolt went viral, the thugs came down on Schiff like a ton of bricks. They obtained an injunction in a federal kangaroo court prohibiting the sale of Schiff’s how-to book, thereby blowing the First Amendment protection of a free press to smithereens. And in 2005 the federal criminals sent him to prison without a real trial for 14 years at the age of 78. He died in prison October 16, 2015. From 1974 until he died in 2016–42 year!!!–with the treat of prison and loss of all of his property constantly hanging like a guillotine over his head, Schiff never wavered. His courage in facing down the most feared government agency since Hitler’s Gestapo, Stalin’s NKVD and Mao’s CPC Central Committee places Schiff furlongs ahead of any Medal of Honor winner in the categories of raw courage and unwavering devotion to American freedom. RIP, Irwin. For a detailed account of what the federal mafia, as Schiff called ’em, did to Irwin, I heartily recommend Jim Davies small book, How Government SILENCED Irwin Schiff and what you can do about it http://www.takelifeback.com/hgsis/

]]>https://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/an-ode-to-irwin-schiff/feed/0MORE ON THE LYNCHING OF IRWIN SCHIFFhttps://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/more-on-the-lynching-of-irwin-schiff/
https://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/more-on-the-lynching-of-irwin-schiff/#respondThu, 13 Apr 2017 01:15:47 +0000https://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/?p=118I wrote the following as a comment on an article published on the FEE website titled, “Even Economists Can’t Do Their Own Taxes,” by Antony Davies and James P. Harrigan. If you truly dig into the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) and the history of taxation and tax laws in America, including the Supreme Court cases pertaining thereto, you will discover two important facts: 1) You cannot possibly be legally liable for the individual income tax (or any of the several other employment taxes) because the Constitution with its Bill of Rights precludes the government from levying and collecting an income tax. 2) The IRC–4-million words–is written in such complexity to disguise the fact that you do not have to file a 1040 nor pay an income tax. What is truly maddening about this situation from my personal perspective, having demonstrated the correctness of my understanding since 1971 by not filing returns nor paying any tax, is that here you have two educated and intelligent men pontificating on some of the hairy but minor irritations of the tax law, while ignoring the fact that the federal individual income tax is a scam. The only possible explanation for this is that the scam that has fooled the American public for lo these many years, has bamboozled them as well. For those who would be interested in finding out how they are being screwed, the place to start is a book by Irwin Schiff entitled THE GREAT INCOME TAX HOAX (WHY YOU CAN IMMEDIATELY STOP PAYING THIS ILLEGALLY ENFORCED TAX, https://www.amazon.com/Grea… Now chances are someone is going to see my comment and point out that Irwin Schiff, the most famous “Illegal-Tax Protester” of all time, was convicted and imprisoned for tax evasion three times and ended up dying in prison while serving a 14-year sentence. They will say this to infer that his convictions prove that he was wrong in his understanding of the IRC, and that his appeals of his convictions to federal appellate courts prove their point. To which I say, BALONEY! The IRS agents who accused Schiff, the United States Department of Justice lawyers who prosecuted him, the federal district court judges and the appellate court judges who ruled against him are all people whose munificent emoluments were being paid to them by the United States out of the same tax revenues that Schiff was challenging as being illegal and unauthorized under the Constitution. Is it any surprise that all of these clowns acted in their own self-interest and against Mr. Schiff? Regarding all of the judges, by failing to disqualify themselves from presiding in cases wherein one of the parties was their employer and they had a personal, financial interest in the subject matter of the cases, they were in palpable violation of THE CODE OF CONDUCT FOR UNITED STATES JUDGES, which includes the ethical canons that apply to federal judges and provides guidance on their performance of official duties and engagement in a variety of outside activities. The CODE is the law of the land. (see: http://www.uscourts.gov/jud… , and pay particular attention to Canon 3, (C), (c), which unequivocally requires them to disqualify themselves in cases wherein the judge “has a financial interest in the subject matter in controversy or in a party to the proceeding,,,”) In addition to unlawfully sentencing Schiff to prison, the government obtained an injunction barring Schiff from selling his subsequent book titled THE FEDERAL MAFIA, HOW IT ILLEGALLY IMPOSES AND UNLAWFULLY COLLECTS INCOME TAXES. Because Schiff’s own company published this book, the injunction was tantamount to banning a book that was almost entirely political. I doubt there has been a more egregious violation of the First Amendment’s protection of free speech since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, one of which criminalized making “false” statements that were critical of the federal government. (Of course the government would determine what was false.) When the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld the injunction banning Schiff’s book, the real reason the government criminally prosecuted Schiff and banned his book became manifest. In the course of obtaining its injunction, the IRS had collected information and material (evidence) on Schiff indicating that almost 5,000 “zero-income returns,” representing an estimated $56 million in attempted “income-tax evasion,” as the IRS called it, were filed by nearly 3,100 of Schiff’s followers during a three-year period!!! In other words, Schiff’s presentation of his research into the illegality of the income tax had ignited a small but rapidly growing tax revolt that threatened to explode into a veritable Second American Revolution and topple the government’s taxing system, thereby making it impossible for the government to fund the myriad of progressive, social-welfare programs that had been enacted into law after the income tax began producing revenues exponentially larger than anything ever previously imagined in America. See, UNITED STATES V. SCHIFF, COMMERCIAL SPEECH REGULATION OF FREE SPEECH INFRINGEMENT, particularly on page 554 and 578ff, Section V, “THE FEDERAL MAFIA IS POLITICAL, NOT COMMERCIAL SPEECH,” by Jacqueline K. Half http://scholarship.shu.edu/… Taxation is theft. The law is a ass. The IRC is a legal abortion. Withholding is vicious stealing. The Bill of Rights is a sugar-coated lie. The Constitution is a dead issue. It is past time to withdraw our consent to being governed by dishonest people

]]>https://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/more-on-the-lynching-of-irwin-schiff/feed/0ALEXANDER HAMILTON: TAXAHOLIC!https://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/alexander-hamilton-taxaholic/
https://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/alexander-hamilton-taxaholic/#respondTue, 27 Dec 2016 19:15:28 +0000https://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/?p=105Commenting on the decline of true liberalism, libertarian giant Ralph Raico wrote the following shortly before he recently passed away, “In America, the liberal country par excellence, the chief aim [of classical liberals] was to fend off incursions of government power pushed by Alexander Hamilton and his centralizing successors…” Profound and deleterious consequences of the actions of that damn taxaholic continue to haunt Americans to this day. As America’s first Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton’s policy of taxing whiskey sparked the so-called Whiskey Rebellion. “The tax was resisted by farmers in the western frontier regions who were long accustomed to distilling their surplus grain and corn into whiskey. In these regions, whiskey was sufficiently popular that it often served as money [and was crucial to the farmers’ subsistence]. Many of the resisters were war veterans who believed that they were fighting for the principles of the American Revolution, in particular against taxation without local representation, while Hamilton maintained that the taxes were the legal expression of the new powers of Congress.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Rebellion In response, President Washington at the urging of Hamilton activated and led a force of 13,000 militiamen to suppress the revolt. The Whiskey Rebellion was the first time the new government wielded military force against its own citizens, but not the last. Although they lost their battle to prevent the adoption of the Constitution, which changed the nature of American government from a weak and dispersed to strong and centralized authority, Hamilton’s opponents, the Anti-Federalists, managed to insert in the Constitution measures designed to prevent the federal government from evolving into the Leviathan they knew it could become and engorge their liberty by means of taxation. Foremost among those measures, and even more important to the preservation of individual liberty than any of the subsequently added amendments constituting the Bill of Rights, were severe limitations placed on the size of government by directly and indirectly inhibiting the amount and scope of federal taxation by means of certain Sections inserted in Article I of the new Constitution. Today these Sections remain in the Constitution but have become useless anachronisms thanks especially to Alexander Hamilton. The first of the provisions designed to protect Americans from losing their liberty to taxation is contained in Article I, Section 2: “Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this union, according to their respective numbers.” Apportioning of direct taxes required by this language was so important to the Anti-Federalists that they managed to reiterate it in Article I, Section 9: “No capitation, or other direct, tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to the census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.” This is the only constitutional provision twice stated in the Constitution. Although Hamilton didn’t invent the freedom- and prosperity-robbing individual income tax, he was largely responsible for making it possible. Hamilton represented the federal Treasury before the Supreme Court in the first challenge to a direct tax, which had been levied by Congress without being apportioned almost before the ink on the new Constitution had dried. In 1796, Hamilton successfully argued on behalf of the government that a direct tax on personal carriages was not a direct tax. (Properly understood, a direct tax is one that is collected directly from the taxpayer, as opposed to an indirect tax collected from third parties who in turn passes the tax on to taxpayers in the price of a product or service when taxpayers purchase them.) Hamilton argued that the carriage tax was not a direct tax on carriage owners, although the owners were required to pay it, but rather was an excise tax on the owners’ use of the carriage, and thus need not be apportioned. The only logic behind the Supreme Court’s decision to allow this direct tax on the owners of carriages to be collected without the required apportionment was that the justices felt the government needed the money more than individuals needed their liberty! The case, Hylton v. United States, 3 U.S. 171 (1796), ranks with Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 US 393 (1857), wherein the Court decided a negro was not a person, for stupidity and mendacity. (Without delving into the many ramifications of direct taxation, suffice it to say here that such taxes are far more onerous to taxpayers in their collection than indirect taxes. The latter can be avoided by refraining from purchasing taxed items. When they are apportioned as required by the Constitution, it is nigh on to impossible for legislators to vote for direct taxes because their constituents, sensitive to losses of their liberty, are likely to throw the bums out of office at the earliest possible opportunity. For that reason, it was assumed by the Anti-Federalists that direct taxes would only be resorted to under dire circumstances, such as an invasion by a foreign state. Hamilton must have had other ideas.) Hylton stood for 99 years as a legal precedent enabling additional direct taxes masquerading as excises to be enacted by Congress and approved by SCOTUS, including the first income taxes during the Civil War. After those war taxes expired, another income tax was levied without apportionment in 1894. The following year, in the most courageous political decision and opinion a majority of justices have ever rendered, SCOTUS ruled that the 1994 income tax was unconstitutional because it was a direct tax, which had not been apportioned. The case, Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Company, 157 U.S. 429 (1895), also served to invalidate the precedential authority of Hylton and several other SCOTUS decisions that depended on Hylton, wherein direct taxes not levied proportionately had been wrongfully held by the Court to be constitutional. The Pollock court struck a mortal blow against the federal government’s ability to impose direct taxes and expand in size and power virtually without limit. Quasi-socialists in America, better known as progressives, went ballistic. For the next sixteen years, the forces of big government chaffed, lobbied, plotted and planned an assault on the Pollock decision culminating in passage of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913. (The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.) Enactment of the first progressive income tax under the new law followed immediately. The Amendment and the tax were sold to Americans as a “tax the rich only” scheme, which indeed it was in its few first years, but it soon morphed into the working class’ worst nightmare. Since then, the federal government has been able to grow exponentially without restraint at the expense of individual liberty, the people’s prosperity, and to the detriment of the several states’ authority. Progressive laws and agencies have burgeoned, enabling bureaucrats to take control of the economy and the lives and wealth of the American people. Nothing will change the ever-upward trajectory of the size and power of the federal government for as long as the individual income tax and withholding at the source remain in force. The good news is that abolishing the tax without replacing it would make “draining the D.C. swamp” a fait accompli. It doesn’t require repealing the Sixteenth Amendment nor changing the Constitution. An act of Congress will do it. The first American politician to proclaim abolition of the income tax to be his or her paramount objective in seeking the presidency will be swept into office on a landslide of historic proportion. Such a happenstance is likely as early as 2020. If Donald Trump fails to embrace abolition, the D.C. swamp will remain and he will be a one-term president no matter what else he may or may not achieve while in office.

]]>https://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/alexander-hamilton-taxaholic/feed/0YOUR SCREWED! FOLLOW THE MONEY!https://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/your-screwed-follow-the-money/
https://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/your-screwed-follow-the-money/#respondMon, 21 Nov 2016 19:48:35 +0000https://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/?p=101ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT INCOME TAXATION I first want to declare that I don’t believe in the Constitution. I am with Lysander Spooner on that score. It confers no legitimate authority on the federal government. Furthermore, many of its intended (or pretended) benefits have been lost to congressional encroachment and courts’ misinterpretations. Nevertheless, it is still regarded as “the supreme law of the land,” by most Americans, with adoring lip service paid to it by virtually every lawyer and politician. Nor do I believe taxation is ever legit. It is extortion. No individual has a rightful authority to take a neighbor’s property by force or coercion, and it is obviously impossible for individuals to delegate an authority to government they do not themselves possess. However, this essay is written as though the prevailing belief that the Constitution controls the federal government is factual rather than mythical, and it treats taxation as a power the federal government may exercise, but only as prescribed and limited by the Constitution. Most people who visit the Liberty.me website are aware that the federal government is screwing them in one way or another all the time. Well, here is another way you’re being screwed by your rulers, of which you may not be aware. It is as though new copies of the Constitution were printed by the Government Printing Office omitting the Bill of Rights (BOR), and nobody noticed until the stripped-down version had been so widely distributed through government schools without creating a backlash it became the law of the land by default, with federal courts refusing to enforce an anachronism most Americans never met. However, more important than any article of the BOR as a constitutional safeguard of individual liberty, perhaps even more indispensable than the BOR as a whole, is this: Article I, Section 2, clause 3: “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers…” This protection was unique among constitutional safeguards of individual liberty in that it was reiterated by the Framers of the Constitution in Article I, Section 9, clause 4: “No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.” Evidently the Framers took extra care to ensure direct taxes would never be levied without being apportioned. Apportioning a tax requires Congress to first determine the total amount of the tax to be levied, and then divide the total among the states in proportion to their respective populations. Each state would then either pay its share of the tax if it had the necessary funds and did not want to further burden its taxpayers, or it could collect the required amount from its people as its legislature thought best. If a state failed to pay its share, the federal government could tax the state’s people directly. Article 1, Section 9, is the section of the Constitution as originally adopted containing explicit protections of the rights of individuals. Many Americans contemplating the new Constitution felt Section 9 did not go far enough in protecting individuals from the new government. An agreement was reached with dissenters that the first Congress would immediately add a BOR, which was essential to the adoption of the Constitution. Section 9 contains several BOR-like provisions, such as ensuring the writ of habeas corpus would always be available (with two glaring exceptions), forbidding bills of attainder and ex-post facto laws, requiring direct taxes be apportioned, prohibiting titles of nobility, and other safeguards of people’s liberty from encroachments by government. Another clause of the Constitution pertaining to taxes, which need be mentioned, is Article I, Section 8: “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence [sic] and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States…” (Duties, imposts and excises are indirect taxes.) Although it is seldom thought of as such, the limitation imposed on Congress’ use of its taxing powers for those three stated purposes only, was also designed to protect people’s liberty from destruction by means of taxation. Unfortunately, the meaning of “general welfare” has been creatively enlarged through legislation by Congress and sanctioned by federal courts to include anything the rulers want to enact for their own and their “constituents’” welfare. Most of the activities of the federal government today have nothing to do with the common defense or general welfare of the nation’s people and thus are unconstitutional. The amount of taxation required to fund the current panoply of government activities not contemplated by the authors of the Constitution is toxic in its effects on taxpayers’ freedom. When combined with the unapportioned, direct, income tax to fund such unlawful measures, the consequences are fatal to liberty. The combination has made productive working Americans the equivalent of slaves to the rulers and their bootlicking dependents. In the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) case of McCulloch v. Maryland, (1819), Chief Justice John Marshall is often credited with creating a legal axiom, although he was merely reiterating a phrase initially spoken by Daniel Webster, the celebrated constitutional lawyer representing McCulloch in his argument before the bar. The phrase has since become a legal axiom. As Marshall stated the axiom in his opinion, “The power to tax involves the power to destroy.” Commenting on that case and axiom in a 1976 essay, distinguished libertarian historian, Clarence Carson (1926-2003) wrote: “If the power of a state to tax the Federal government could destroy the instrumentality taxed, (which is what the McCulloch v. Maryland court concluded) how much more readily could government taxation destroy relatively helpless individuals?” Pursuant to the Constitution, taxes are either indirect and must be uniform throughout the states, or direct and must be apportioned between the people of the several states in accord with their respective populations. Grave dangers are posed to legislators’ longevity in office if they attempt to levy direct taxes. Because direct taxes essentially strip taxpayers of their privacy and heavily impinge on their liberty, voting taxpayers are likely to give legislators who pass them the boot at the next election. It was understood by the Founders and Framers that resort to direct taxes for these and other reasons would be limited to crises such as war. Furthermore, collecting indirect taxes is exponentially easier and more productive than direct taxes—if, and only if–that pesky, iterated, apportionment requirement is honored. If not, direct taxes become a bonanza of easy pickings from the pockets of taxpayers by their rulers. The difficulties of levying and collecting an apportioned tax may be likened to trying to pull a tiger’s wisdom teeth without an anesthetic. The spawn of what are now ubiquitous, unapportion, direct taxes is the unfettered political corruption pervading Washington, D.C. today, which is why Donald Trump’s purely rhetorical promise to “drain the (D.C.) swamp” resonated with so many Americans. In the minds of the Founders and Framers, direct taxes were perilous to the “blessings of liberty” the Constitution was meant to secure, so they made it nigh on to impossible for Congress to levy a direct tax except in dire circumstances, such as during war, by the simple device of requiring direct taxes be apportioned. Or so they thought. If the BOR had stated, “Congress shall make no laws destroying the lives or property of the people by means of taxation,” it would have been redundant, merely reiterating the protection afforded by the requirement that direct taxes be apportioned. Unapportioned direct taxes are a more efficient means of destroying people’s lives, liberty and property than was the guillotine used by the French government during its Reign of Terror. It is far easier to destroy lots of people’s lives through direct taxes than one by one on the guillotine, which is why Karl Marx in his Communist Manifesto called for “a heavy progressive or graduated income tax,” a direct tax, as a “means of despotic inroads on the rights of property.” Although Marx’s communism could not have been contemplated by those intrepid early Americans, they had experience with despotic inroads on their rights of property by the British Parliament, and they thought they could protect themselves against legislated despotism by placing severe limitations on the legislature’s power to extract taxes directly from individuals. They were, of course, wrong. Throughout history rulers have lived off taxation. As a class, they have been willing to do anything, say anything, be anything to keep the revenues they depend on flowing. Based on the behavior of government actors, there is only one rational way to think of them viz-a-viz “we the people.” It is them against us! And they alone have guns with “authority” to use them against us to ensure their taxes are expeditiously collected. A study of the history of taxes in America demonstrates that every president, legislator, judge and justice is eventually corrupted by relying on a system of taxation, which makes them dependent on force and violence to obtain their daily bread. Undoubtedly many good people enter “public” service, but they cannot remain honest while dependent on taxes—stolen property. Can this be? All government operatives corrupt? Yep! FOLLOW THE MONEY! When we are speaking of taxes, that’s easy. It comes out of your pocket and goes into theirs by a procedure identical to the crime of extortion. The state may spend some of it on “we the people,” but before the people see any of it come back to them, rest assured the government folks will have taken a large chunk for themselves, their special interests and their cronies. Whatever the people may get back could have been purchased for a fraction of what they paid for it in taxes. Because the federal, individual income tax is a direct tax being collected without being apportioned as required by the Constitution, it constitutes the largest fraud and most profitable pillaging of any population in all of history, surpassing the bountiful plunders of all the Egyptian Pharaohs, Roman Emperors and Genghis Kahn combined by infinitude. It has served to enslave and impoverish America’s productive class. No one but Jesus could refrain from dipping into the abundance of OPM available to rulers without fear of censure or condemnation thanks to unapportioned, direct taxation. (re., OPM: sounds like opium, is equally addictive, stands for Other People’s Money—forcibly extorted.) How you lost your constitutional protection from the ravages of direct taxes is laid out in all the maddening details in the only comprehensive history of taxation in America written from the point of view of a taxpayer-scholar with no personal axe to grind. The book, The Great Income Tax Hoax, (1985), was written by Irwin Schiff, unquestionably the bravest American Patriot since Nathan Hale. The book is meticulously researched, the material carefully analyzed and its logical conclusions thoroughly documented by a brilliant scholar, economist and historian. Schiff was imprisoned three times for almost twenty years for publishing the details of the federal government’s income-tax fraud on the American people. While he was in prison, to the chagrin of the IRS agents and Department of Justice lawyers who prosecuted (persecuted) him, and the judges who prevented him from defending himself, he continued to research and write while in prison and always came out with a new book upon his release—except the last time. In due course, Schiff was “officially” recognized by the federal OPM eaters as the most dangerous whistleblower in American history. His enemies, the voracious enemies of America’s taxpayers, made him the only American author ever to have a nonfiction, political book, The Federal Mafia, banned by the federal government in flagrant derogation of the First Amendment. Like Nathan Hale before him, Schiff was killed by an invading enemy of the American people, in Schiff’s case the federal government. He wasn’t executed, but he was unlawfully sentenced to prison for thirteen years when he was seventy-seven years old by a cruel, despotic federal judge who was utterly dependent upon revenues from the illegal-tax scheme Schiff’s books exposed. Irwin Schiff died in a prison hospital October 16, 2015, from cancer, which may well have been successfully treated if he had been on the outside. To learn how, why and what Uncle Scam did to Irwin Schiff, to get a picture of the gross injustice the government perpetrated by thrice unlawfully imprisoning him, please read a well-documented e-book by Jim Davies, How Government Silenced Irwin Schiff. It will probably make your blood boil as it did mine. To comprehend the largest fraud ever perpetrated requires knowing the difference between direct and indirect taxes, a difference fully understood by the Founders Fathers and the Constitution’s Framers—and Irwin Schiff. The distinguishing feature is so simple, stark and obvious in the meaning of the words direct and indirect as to defy misunderstanding. Direct taxes are collected by the government directly from taxpayers. Indirect taxes are collected indirectly from taxpayers through third parties who pay the tax to the government but pass it along to the ultimate taxpayers in the price of a product or service. Direct taxes are on taxpayers’ income or property. Indirect taxes are on taxpayers’ consumption or spending. Direct taxes cannot be avoided. Some indirect taxes can be avoided by refraining from purchasing taxed items, although not without a cost to taxpayers even when they refrain from buying a taxed item. In a situation wherein a consumer, who is deterred from buying an item by the added cost of the tax, subjectively values the item more than it would sell for without the tax but less than its price with the tax, the disappointed consumer suffers an indeterminate but very real loss. He may never be able to own the desired item he would have had but for the tax. The seller too suffers a loss of a sale she would have had at her asking price had she not been required to pay and pass along the indirect tax. Occasionally, sellers will pay but not pass on an indirect tax to attract customers to their products or store. An indirect tax laid upon life’s necessities is another matter altogether. A sales tax on groceries, for example, which six sadistic state legislatures have enacted to punish their most vulnerable residents, is even more diabolical than an unapportioned direct tax, for a grocery tax inevitably takes a certain amount of food from the mouths of the poorest among us to fatten the coffers of states. What those early Americans knew about taxes was derived from England’s experience with taxes, and especially from Adam Smith’s, The Wealth of Nation, which was published in 1776, and soon became the best-selling book in America. Smith defined the difference between the two types of taxes essentially as I have here. Being required to pay a direct tax directly to the government creates a plethora of potential problems for taxpayers, all of which impinge upon their personal freedom. Those who have been subjected to an audit of their individual income tax return (IRS form 1040) know their privacy and freedom went out the window when the IRS ordered them to produce their books and records and submit to a probing interrogation by the agency’s auditors with no limits on what they may inquire about one’s financial affairs. The Founders and Framers were not ignorant nor confused about the inquisition-like nature of direct taxes, and sought to protect Americans with those apportioning clauses. However, many of the OPM eaters in the federal government plus hordes of private lawyers and accountants, so-called “tax practitioners,” insult their illustrious forebears by alleging the Constitution’s Framers didn’t know the difference between direct and indirect taxes. The practitioners’ purpose of course is to support nefarious claims that one direct tax or another is not a direct tax but an excise tax not subject to apportionment. Taxes on income are the most destructive to individual liberty of all taxes. Obviously, a worker’s wages are his property, often her only property. Under no circumstances, except possibly to meet the exigencies of war, would colonial Americans have acquiesced in having the fruits of their labors taxed. They would think It safer to remain under the rule of King George III and the British Parliament, and suffer the tyranny of such impositions as the Stamp Act, rather than submit to a direct tax on workers’ wages to support the new government. Prior to adoption of the Constitution, the Articles of Confederation wisely denied the federal government any power to tax. It could only requisition revenues from the states, which in turn could tax their inhabitants. The federal government was without power to enforce its requisitions, which sometimes went unpaid. It was this “weakness” that the proponents of a strong central authority with unlimited power to tax–the so-called Federalists–sought to rectify by means of the Constitution. They and the Constitution were vigorously opposed by the Anti-Federalists. At their first opportunity to do so, the Justices of SCOTUS effectively abolished the constitutional limitation twice stated in Article I, Sections 2 and 9, requiring direct taxes be apportioned. The denizens of Liberty.me don’t need to be told the ultimate purpose of the state and its taxes is to enrich nonproductive rulers and their cronies at the expense of productive citizens through taxes. The optimal level of taxation in the estimation of rulers is the maximum rate that won’t kill the goose. Avarice, however, inevitably impels rulers to overshoot the mark causing their nations to self-destruct. More nation-states have been brought to ruin on the anvil of overwrought taxes than by any other cause—by far. (See, Charles Adams, For Good and Evil, the Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization) The American government is well along its own road to destruction. In 1794, with the ink on the Constitution barely dry, Congress passed a tax on “carriages for the conveyance of persons,” which was obviously a tax-the-rich, populist scheme intended to curry favor with most Americans who did not own carriages at the expense of their wealthier neighbors who did. The enacted legislation did not include apportionment. Like all human actions motivated by greed or envy, the cost to those poorer Americans who sought to benefit at the expense of their wealthier neighbors exceeded their anticipated benefits exponentially, as their rulers turned the sword of unapportioned direct taxes on them. Subsequently, other avaricious Americans promulgated the progressive income tax to burden their wealthier neighbors, only to have it eventually suck the marrow from their own bones as their rulers repeatedly lowered tax brackets to capture the earnings of middle and lower income folks, while the wealthy targets of the tax bought politicians who installed loopholes in the income-tax laws benefiting their masters only. This covetous carriage tax was challenged in 1796 by a man named Hylton on the grounds it obviously was a direct tax on his personal property, thus requiring apportionment. The justices of SCOTUS, in a decision of everlasting infamy, determined the tax was constitutional because it did not fall directly on Hylton’s property, but rather it was a tax on his use of his carriages measured by their value, and thus was an excise not subject to apportionment, even though Hylton was required to pay the tax directly to the government. The only possible explanation for the contorted illogic employed by the Hylton court is the ugly fact that the justices perceived their generous emoluments were inextricably tied to the collection of patently unlawful taxes. Their noxious decision became a precedent, which was observed, enlarged and reinforced in succeeding SCOTUS tax cases. The case, Hylton v. United States, 3 U.S. 171 (1796), unlocked the safe protecting taxpayers’ incomes and property from predation, and the OPM eaters poured in like crows on road kill. For the next one-hundred years the Constitution’s prohibition of unapportioned direct taxes more often than not was ignored by the nation’s legislators, courts and presidents. Finally, during the Civil War, the ultimate weapon of predation, the first income tax, was unleashed upon productive Americans. Exactly one-hundred years after Hylton, in a case entitled Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan and Trust Co. (157 U.S. 429, 1985), SCOTUS ruled that an income tax passed by Congress in 1894 was unconstitutional. In reaching its astonishing decision the court for the first time dug deep into the history of taxes in England and America from before the nation’s founding to the current time. Their research revealed the authors of the Constitution had in fact a comprehensive understanding of the difference between direct and indirect taxes, as well as the inhibiting effect of apportionment upon direct taxes. In a decision that must go down in history as the bravest any justices of SCOTUS ever rendered, the Pollock court overturned Hylton and abrogated the legal authority of many subsequent SCOTUS decisions that had relied on Hylton to uphold tax laws, which were unconstitutional for having classified various direct taxes as excises under one “legal” pretext or another relying on the “authority” of Hylton. Adopting the words of Albert Gallatin in his, A Sketch of the Finances of the United States, published in 1796, the Pollock court reiterated, “The most generally received opinion, however, is that, by direct taxes in the Constitution, those are meant which are raised on the capital or revenue of the people; by indirect, such as are raised on their expenses.” The dedication in Schiff’s The Great Income Tax Hoax reads as follows: “To Melville Weston Fuller, Chief Justice of the United States from 1888-1910, and Stephen Johnson Field, Associate Supreme Court Justice from 1863-1897, for the judicial integrity they displayed in holding an income tax unconstitutional, and for their magnificent opinions which, by contrast, clearly reveal the criminal nature of today’s Federal Judiciary. The Pollock decision is must reading for anyone interested in discovering the nature and extent of Uncle Sam’s income-tax scam. It not only repealed an existing progressive income tax, it made the imposition of any future income tax subject to apportioning, which effectively made taxing an individual’s income nigh on to politically impossible. It came at the apex of the progressive movement in America. Progressives went ballistic. They spent the next eighteen years working day and night to overturn Pollock, and finally persuaded Americans to adopt the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913: “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration.” The Sixteenth Amendment failed to accomplish its purpose of overruling Pollock, although the IRS at some later point began enforcing the income tax as if it had. The Amendment did not repeal the two Constitutional provisions requiring direct taxes be apportioned, and it left open the crucial question: what constitutes “incomes?” The only possible way to understand this matter in all its ramifications is to read two of Schiff’s books, The Great Income Tax Hoax, and The Federal Mafia. Suffice to say here, SCOTUS has defined income as corporate profits (gross income minus all expenses), and wages obviously, are not gains nor profits. They are an even exchange of a worker’s property–her labor–for her employer’s property—its money—equal in value to her labor. No gain or profit is realized in an even exchange. There is a plethora of federal-court cases on the legality of the income tax and subsidiary or related questions with essentially all of them interpreting the income-tax laws contrary to Schiff’s expositions in his masterful books. Quite a few of the cases that OPM consumers such as judges, tax liaxxx lawyers and tax accountants cite to prove Schiff wrong are decisions of federal district courts and circuit courts of appeal cases in which Schiff was the losing party. Two of the primary beneficiaries of the impenetrable, 90,000-page, 4-million-word Internal Revenue Code are tax lawyers and tax accountants. There isn’t a human alive who can comprehend the Code, but these pretend they can. However, as Schiff points out, the legal maxim, “void for vagueness,” alone makes the IR Code unlawful. If you do not understand a law you cannot obey it, and no one understands the Code. These creepy, subhuman OPM eaters, tax lawyers and tax accountants, with the help of their partners in the IRS and DOJ, have infested the internet, particularly Wikipedia, with defamatory commentary about how dishonest Irwin Schiff was and how utterly preposterous his “theories.” Don’t believe a word of it. I knew Irwin Schiff. He knew more about the Constitution and more about America’s tax laws than any SCOTUS justice since the nation’s founding. The only justice who comes even close to Schiff in understanding was Chief Justice Fuller of Pollock-opinion fame. The amount of time and money spent discrediting Schiff should warn any thinking person that Schiff wasn’t the nut case his enemies would have you believe. When it comes to the federal income tax, more than any man or woman before him or since, Schiff knew whereof he spoke. How could all those hundreds or even thousands of judges, SCOTUS justices, accountants, tax lawyers, IRS personnel, DOJ lawyers, presidents, senators and representatives, plus an entire armada of OPM consuming folks be wrong and Irwin Schiff right? FOLLOW THE MONEY! If Irwin Schiff is right, and he is, the individual income tax is unconstitutional and cannot be enforced. Federal spending by and on all those OPM consumers will need be cut to a fraction of what it is today. If progressives went ballistic over the Pollock decision, I imagine they would start another Civil War if or when Irwin Schiff’s truth becomes general knowledge, and the people force their government to honor the Constitution by ditching the individual income tax. With multi-trillions of dollars involved in the historic mega-fraud Schiff uncovered, the tax consumers, like other rulers of all times, will say, or do, or be whatever it takes to keep the bonanza of easy access to taxpayers’ pockets open. If bodies, like Schiff’s, must fall, so be it. One of the tactics employed by the OPM eaters to discredit Irwin Schiff is to point to his several criminal convictions for income tax evasion, regurgitating snippets from the courts’ decisions all over the Internet. When seeing these slanders, I urge readers of this essay to consider two critical factors, which demonstrate conclusively that Schiff was never lawfully convicted of a single crime. In every one of his tax cases, Irwin Schiff argued that he had committed no crime because the authorities had misinterpreted the law, which was the basis for the charges against him. This is demonstrably true. However, as every American who has served on a jury has been told by the presiding judge, in courtroom trials the judge alone explains the law to the jury. The jurors are told by the judge they may only judge the facts—not the law. With his innocence, freedom and his very life at stake, Schiff’ was prohibited by the judges from explaining his innocence by explaining the law, a chore the judges reserved to themselves, then proceeding to misstate it. Those who have read his books know how thoroughly Schiff understood the law and how incisively he could explain it. Of course, none of his judges allowed the juries to read his books. In other words, he was prevented by self-interested judges from defending himself. It is amazing to me that his treatment at the hands of a federal judiciary obligated to protect his freedom didn’t send him over the edge, but it didn’t. The charge of the OPM eaters that he pleaded insanity at one of his trials is a scurrilous lie. In every one of Schiff’s cases, as well as on every one of his appeals, the judges were disqualified under U.S. law to preside over those cases. They were required by law to recuse themselves for cause, but failed to obey the law. Here is what the law, the Code of Conduct for United States Judges, requires, “Canon 3, (C) Disqualification… (1) A judge shall disqualify himself or herself in a proceeding in which the judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned, including but not limited to instances in which… (c) the judge knows that the judge, individually or as a fiduciary, or the judge’s spouse or minor child residing in the judge’s household, has a financial interest in the subject matter in controversy or in a party to the proceeding, or any other interest that could be affected substantially by the outcome of the proceeding.” In all of Schiff’s cases, his judges had a financial interest in the subject matter in controversy and a financial interest in the opposing party–the United States–the judges’ employer for gosh sakes! In all his cases, the subject matter was the income tax, in which federal judges have a large, personal, financial interest because of their generous salaries and Cadillac benefits derived from revenues produced by the income tax, the legality of which Schiff was challenging, and those munificent emoluments were being paid to Schiff’s judges by the same party that was prosecuting him. No clearer example of judicial bias can be found in the annals of criminal-court proceedings. The purpose of the twice-stated, apportioning clauses in the Constitution was to protect Americans’ liberty from the potential ravages of direct taxes. Biased judges protecting the revenues that pay their emoluments accounts for the egregious injustice suffered by Irwin Schiff. It also explains the fact that in essentially every federal court case wherein apportionment was a consideration, the only concern expressed in the opinions of the many judges and justices is for the negative impact apportioning would have on the government’s ability to raise revenues, ignoring the many benefits apportioning confers on individual liberty. Apportioning taxes has thus become a dead letter without the necessity of repealing those two pesky clauses from the Constitution. Why? FOLLOW THE MONEY! If any reader is interested the grounds on which apportioning is dismissed from the Constitution by a distinguished members of the OPM-eaters class, see: https://law.utexas.edu/faculty/calvinjohnson/directtax.pdf The author of this lengthy essay, a tax lawyer and former U.S. Treasury Department tax attorney, brings a virtual library of authorities in support of his contention that the Framers failed to realize the potential damage they did to the government’s ability to tax by failing to strike the offensive apportioning clauses from the Constitution. (The dummies!) His catalogue of historical references dwarfs those of Schiff and the Pollock-court opinion, but don’t be fooled. A careful analysis of the author’s sources reveals more about his tax-consumer bias by its omissions of important historical sources relied upon by both Schiff, the Pollock opinion and the Framers. Professor Johnson also failed to examine the history of taxation in England, which the Founders and Framers studied in depth to arrive at their deep knowledge of all aspects of taxation. Nor does the tax-law professor even attempt to understand Adam Smith’s objections to direct taxes nor the influence Smith had on the concurrent assessment of taxes by those influential early Americans. Why? FOLLOW THE MONEY. If anyone is interested in reading the Anti-Federalists Papers by men who opposed the Constitution as dangerous to liberty, here is a compilation with a table of contents with links to many of those documents. In one of them, #36, is a letter written by “The Federal Farmer,” who is presumed by historians to be Richard Henry Lee of Virginia. Quoting from it: “I am sensible also, that it is said that congress will not attempt to lay and collect internal taxes; that it is necessary for them to have the power, though it cannot probably be exercised. I admit that it is not probable that any prudent congress will attempt to lay and collect internal taxes, especially direct taxes: but this only proves, that the power would be improperly lodged in congress, and that it might be abused by imprudent and designing men.” RIP, Mr. Lee, you were right, and those designing men have included some of the most revered U.S. presidents, senators, representatives, judges and justices of SCOTUS. The IRS currently enforces the Internal Revenue Code in flagrant violation of the First, Fourth and Fifth Articles of the BOR. The Agency doesn’t even enforce its own Internal Revenue Code as written. The Code recognizes the fact that the tax must be voluntary to conform to the Constitution, and it is so written, but it is deceptively shrouded from the public by the Code’s incomprehensible complexity that even a brilliant scholar needs help deciphering its four-million words. If you care to understand why you lawfully need not file or pay the federal income tax, you need to read Schiff. You will never learn you’ve been screwed by the income tax from your president, congress or the courts. Corrupt “public servants” all survive and thrive on your taxes. They are OPM eaters, hooked on income-tax revenues. Your wages are their opiate. FOLLOW THE MONEY.

]]>https://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/your-screwed-follow-the-money/feed/0SEEKING A JOB WITH THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATIONhttps://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/seeking-a-job-with-the-trump-administration/
https://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/seeking-a-job-with-the-trump-administration/#respondThu, 17 Nov 2016 18:10:50 +0000https://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/?p=98Ned Netterville, DSDE, EDACS, I-TP, PhD Address & Phone Number redacted PROFESSIONAL CREDENTIALS Licensed and Certified Swamp Draining Engineer Licensed and Certified Dangerous Animal Control Specialist IRS-Certified Illegal-Tax Protester (1971 to Present) PhD in Austrian Economics EDUCATION & DEGREES AWARDED Okefenokee School of Swamp Engineering, Doctor of SDE Dunlap (TN) Exotic and Dangerous Animal Control School, EDACS Internal Revenue Service Designated Illegal-Tax Protester, I-TP Lone Oak (TN) Intl. School of Common-Sense Economics, PhD D.C. PLAN My dissertation for the terminal engineering degree (DSDE) in swamp draining technology is a plan to drain the D.C Swamp and keep it drained. It received the Dean’s Medal for Innovation, was designated “America’s Most Dangerous Plot” by the Service Employees International Union and was praised by the National Taxpayers Union. It remains the only plan in existence for draining the D.C. Swamp and keeping it drained by blocking the inflow of money that becomes stagnant when it reaches D.C. The plan includes the humane capture and relocation of all dangerous denizens of the swamp including alligators, rattlesnakes, water moccasins, and an invasive species, the Entitled Bureaurat. Any swamp administrator who does not effectively eliminate the swamps hazardous species will be co-opted or eaten by the resident swamp creatures before any draining project can begin. The key to my plan’s award-winning design is the repeal of the federal individual income tax as the only way to ensure the D.C. swamp is never refilled with stagnant money and re-infested with dangerous critters. (Proof of danger involved: D.C. Election Results: Clinton 93%, Trump 4%) EXPERIENCE Twenty-three swamps drained throughout Tennessee and converted to pasture, crop land and fine residential developments. All dangerous species removed, including copperheads, rattle snakes, wild hogs, hellbenders, black widow spiders, zoning inspectors, and seven county commissioners. BONUS In addition to my own expertise, I will provide a complimentary pack of well-trained canines to find, hold and assist in the humane capture and removal of those dangerous OPM eaters (re, OPM: Other People’s Money—forcibly extorted), and continue to keep them out. My kennel includes Plott Hounds, Treeing Walkers, Oorang Airedales, American Pit Bulls and Tibetan Mastiffs.

]]>https://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/seeking-a-job-with-the-trump-administration/feed/0IRWIN SCHIFF AND WIKI DECEPTIONhttps://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/irwin-schiff-and-wiki-deception/
https://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/irwin-schiff-and-wiki-deception/#commentsThu, 06 Oct 2016 20:12:07 +0000https://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/?p=92The following is an excerpt from a conversation I’ve been having with a tax lawyer/CPA regarding the Wikipedia “article” on a famous tax protester and libertarian, Irwin Schiff. Here is the Schiff article: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irwin_Schiff) When I tried as a Wiki editor to add some insight from my personal knowledge of Irwin to the Schiff article, a tax lawyer-CPA who goes by the name of Famspear on the Web and is also a prolific Wiki editor objected to my edit for not conforming to Wikipedia’s rules for creating and editing articles. When such disagreements occur between two editors, a “User talk page” is the forum for arguing whether the change should be allowed or not. In this case the talk page is mine and is captioned “User talk:Ned Netterville.” Here is the link to that page. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ned_Netterville) If you scroll down to where you see in larger letters, “Irwin Schiff (edit),” my conversation with Famspear begins there, and the portion I’ve excerpted begins immediately following a line that is drawn across the page further down. What you read here was copied from that page, but I have made a few minor alterations to correct typos, grammatical and punctuation errors, etc., and to add detail where I felt it was needed for clarity among Liberty.me readers. One of my reasons for posting this on Liberty.me is to show the liberty minded folks at the site that statists abound (as if you didn’t know:), and are hard at work slanting many Wikipedia articles to favor the statists’ positions, even though articles are in theory and according to the rules to be written from a “Neutral Point Of View.” (NPOV) What this means is that if there are divergent points of view, both should be fairly represented. Of course if no one but statists are writing the articles, libertarian points of view will remain unknown. Anyone can become a Wiki editor. It is easy and fun to create or edit an article on a subject with which you are familiar, and have it posted on Wikipedia. Or if you see something that is wrong or misrepresented in an article, you can correct it. All that you need to do is learn the rules for editors and then have at it. I’ve had several of my edits deleted only because I failed to follow the rules. I’ll do better on that score in the future. I also hope people who read this will learn a little of the truth about Irwin Schiff, a true American patriot and the most courageous libertarian I have ever known, who has been smeared by the government and the beneficiaries of the income, SS and employment tax scams. Any person capable of understanding the Constitution who will take the trouble to read Irwin Schiff’s 1985 book, THE GREAT INCOME TAX HOAX, will come away convinced that the manner by which the government collects these taxes does not conform to the Constitution, thus, my calling it a scam is not hyperbole. Here is the excerpt: _______________________________________________________________________________________ Famspear: I’m going to answer some of the questions you asked me earlier because I think they will tell you where I am coming from on the subjects of Irwin Schiff and his take as well as my own on what both Schiff and I believe(d) is the unconstitutional manner in which employment taxes—income, SS, etc.—are enforced in order to collect them, and because they are direct taxes levied without apportionment as required by the Constitution. I personally have no regard for the Constitution for reasons pointed out by such legal scholars as Lysander Spooner, who posited: “The Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation. It has no authority or obligation at all, unless as a contract between man and man. And it does not so much as even purport to be a contract between persons now existing…” He goes into much greater detail as to why the Constitution is a dead letter. (http://praxeology.net/LS-NT-6.htm) I also concur in the opinion of Professor John Hasnas, expressed in his essay, the title of which describes his thesis, THE MYTH OF THE RULE OF LAW. (http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/MythFinalDraft.pdf) It appears evident to me, that federal judges who receive paid salaries and “Cadillac” benefits from the federal government, which are derived from tax revenues, uphold the Constitution only when it is convenient for members of the government hierarchy. However, because the federal judiciary and almost all lawyers rotely proclaim the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land and staunchly uphold the myth that it is universally honored by the federal judiciary, I will state my objections to income and employment taxes (SS tax, unemployment compensation tax, etc.) and your arguments here for its authority as though it really was enforced by the courts, rather than ignored when it proves inconvenient to the government’s revenues, which has been the case since the very first case involving a federal tax was ruled on by the Supreme Court. However, with the advent of the Civil War, the Constitution’s safeguards against government tyranny by taxation have fallen like lake-effect snow in Buffalo, NY. (“War,” observed Randolph Bourne perceptively, “is the health of the state.” (http://www.bigeye.com/warstate.htm) I should also and always say that I am a disciple of Jesus, though not a Christian, by which I mean I try—however haltingly–to follow his teaching and his example. I have written extensively on the question of Jesus’ regard for taxes and the legitimacy of the violent state. Here are a few samples that will give you an idea of what I believe and where I stand on these issues. (https://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/) And, IMHO, it follows from discipleship that I am a pacifist (https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/pacifist) and a voluntaryist, ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntaryism) which may be redundant since most of the voluntaryists I know are pacifists. This website provides a good representation of what voluntaryism is all about: (http://voluntaryist.com/) My 1971 tax return, the first one I had filed without the assistance of a CPA firm. was audited by the IRS. I was notified that my business income and deductions would be the subject of the audit. That year my only “business” was buying and selling stocks. My only other “income” was two weeks or a month’s salary from an employer I no longer worked for. When the IRS agent arrived, I was subjected to what I now know was a “full field audit,” as opposed to an audit of my business income and expenses only. I have since learned that the deceitful manner it was sprung on me violated IRS rules for agents conducting such audits. (https://www.irs.gov/uac/the-examination-audit-process) The agent spent several hours going over and asking for an explanation of every receipt of money or deposit or investment I had made that year, and every purchase and expenditure for me and my family personally as well as for my “business,” which was limited to trading stocks and hardly worthy of being called a business. During that year I had made a trip to Australia with the objective of investing in a farm, business or other opportunity. However, I was much put off by the advanced state of socialism in Australia and returned having only invested about $8000 in a stock recommended to me by a broker in Sidney who I knew personally. I had deducted a large part of my expenses for that trip. The agent said the expenses could not be deducted. I argued, showing him a section of the Code that appeared to me to make the deduction legitimate, while he pointed to a section that could be interpreted to mean the opposite. He departed saying he would take it up with his supervisor. I was subsequently notified that the deduction was disallowed and I was “assessed” additional tax, interest and penalty of about $250, which I felt was completely arbitrary and set at a dollar figure to adequately compensate the government for the time its agent had spent on the audit, but not so high that it would pay for me to contest the IRS’s ruling, which I supposed would require hiring a tax lawyer. The $250 was a negligible sum in relation to my income that year or the previous few years. However, the experience of being subjected to a wanton breach of my privacy, and of having to answer questions about my personal financial affairs from a so-called public servant, whose demeanor throughout was supercilious, was an excruciating, humiliating ordeal. I determined I would never again allow such a flagrant violation of my privacy to be done to me by the government. That arbitrarily “adjusted” tax return is the last return I ever filed, whether federal, state or local. That $250 is the last income tax I ever paid. Thus have I avoided audit humiliation. The IRS, being a bumbling bureaucracy, didn’t catch up with my refusal to file until late in 1982. An agent stopped by my house when I wasn’t home and left his card asking me to call him. When I did he wanted to know why I hadn’t filed returns for the years 1976, 77, 78. 79, 80, and 81. I told him that I didn’t owe any taxes for those years. (I believe I had by then read Schiff’s book, HOW ANYONE CAN STOP PAYING INCOME TAXES.) The agent informed me I would nevertheless have to file returns for those years and allowed that I could have two weeks to do so. Within two weeks I sent the agent 1040 forms for those six years on which I printed in big bold letters, “I CANNOT PROVIDE THE INFORMATION REQUESTED HEREIN, UNLESS THE DEPARTMENT OF TREASURY WILL ASSURE ME THAT IN SO DOING ALL OF MY CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS AS A CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES WILL REMAIN INVIOLATE.” Treasury never provided me with that assurance, and I never provided Treasury with any of the requested information nor any money in the succeeding 44 years. Thus, it indisputable: employment taxes cannot be collect if one’s constitutional rights are respected. It appears by Treasury’s failure to take me up on my multiple quid pro quos that the IRS silently concurs. So you see, Famspear, I’ve been about this business of resisting taxes for substantially longer that you have been a practicing tax lawyer. I stopped filing or paying those employment taxes even before Irwin Schiff did. Furthermore, my quid-pro-quo offer to Treasury was a manner of responding to Treasury’s income-tax hoax, as Irwin called it, which was original with me rather than something proposed by Irwin Schiff. It was, however, influenced by Irwin’s suggestion of filing “a Fifth Amendment return,” which I think was contained in his book, HOW ANYONE CAN STOP PAYING INCOME TAXES. (https://www.amazon.com/Irwin-Schiffs-Anyone-Paying-Income/dp/0930374037) So if you mean by the word “follower,” which you’ve been using here, a person who has been influenced by Irwin Schiff in resisting the IRS, then count me proudly in. Because the manner in which the IRS goes about enforcing the income tax violates several Articles of the Bill of Rights, I feel my quid-pro-quo is more inclusive and broadly protective of my rights than one limited to asserting the 5thAmendment’s requirement of due process alone. The IRS did its usual best to frighten me into complying, but to no avail. Its agents did manage to steal a total of about $550 to $600 dollars from two banks where I had checking accounts. Those banks gave the IRS my money without the requisite court order. (See the 5th Amendment.) Fortunately, I was able to recoup most of that amount. I sued both banks in state courts. The attorney for one of the banks wisely and quickly offered to settle for $500, which was more than was taken from that bank, so I accepted. The other bank’s outside counsel, presumably more concerned for running up their fee than for their client’s welfare, successfully defended through trial, appellate, and state supreme courts. Those victories for the tax lawyers were, I must presume, paid for by their client. You can guess better than I what a prestigious law firm would have charged their bank client for their “services.” I would gladly have settled with that bank for $500 as well, and called it a win-win outcome. Because of the experience of having money stolen from me by those feckless banksters conspiring with the IRS, I had to give up a good resume-writing business in which I was engaged at the time, because most of my customers paid by check or credit card, requiring me to use a bank. The easy reach of IRS agents into any and every financial institution, all of which are deeply in thrall to the government, make the business of resisting unlawful federal taxes a many faceted occupation requiring some ingenuity to be able to retain the fruits of one’s labors. I also spent 34 days in jail for “civil contempt” of court for refusing a district judge’s unlawful order to comply with an “IRS Collection Summons.” Again, the IRS had no court judgment against me for the money it was demanding. (Does everyone see the Constitution’s safeguards of liberty being flushed down the toilet by that judge’s prosecution, conviction and sentencing of me without even an indictment or trial or pretense of due process?) After 34 rather enjoyable days in three local jails, I agreed to comply as ordered so I could be home for Memorial Day. Thus, I was forced to agree to “produce my financial records and give testimony under oath” to the IRS. To this day I recall with pleasure the disappointment of the two IRS agents who evidently were sure that I would have a wealth of information to reveal after being brought to heel by a stay in jail. I presume they also thought I was hiding valuable assets or I wouldn’t have gone to jail to avoid revealing the location of my fortune. Fortuitously, I had no records to produce, having stopped keeping financial records back in 1972. However, being forced to testify under oath (affirmation) was almost as excruciating as that long-ago audit ordeal. I was compensated to a degree by the agents’ palpable chagrin at learning nothing that would facilitate their desire to plunder me. (Sidelight: In one of the city jails where I was held there were two other “federal” prisoners on drug charges. By my second day with them, they were sufficiently assured I wouldn’t “narc” them that they offered me some of their Jack Daniels Black Label and high-grade marijuana, which the wife of one of them brought into the jail regularly under the intentionally blind eye of the jailers. Ah, the integrity of public servants made manifest:) That testifying ordeal was my last personal contact with any IRS personnel after a series of earlier encounters with agents trying to persuade me to obey. Subsequently, I continued sending Treasury 1040s with my quid-pro quo for many years. In due course the IRS would notify me by mail that I had been fined $500–without due process–for “filing a frivolous tax return.” Of course I never paid those unlawful fines since I knew they were levied in violations of the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments. I often wonder if I set a record for frivolous-return fines? Today the government’s unenforceable frivolous-return fine has been increased to $5000! (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/6702 ) Wow! By ten times! There must have been a lot of people like me ignoring the smaller fine. I wonder if my casual dismissal of all those smaller fines provoked the increase? Unfortunately, that exponentially larger fine may discourage some would-be tax resisters who are not sufficiently committed, or not aware as I was that such unlawful fines needn’t be paid and can’t be collected—as long as the Constitution means what it says, and as long as one can avoid the bankster-IRS raiders. Of course If my own experience means anything, counting on the government to obey the Constitution is akin to poisonous-snake handling—you may or may not get bit. When government operatives think they can get away with something forbidden by the Constitution, which will profit them, they will do so in a New York minute, explicit constitutional prohibitions to the contrary notwithstanding. At the outset of my duels with the IRS, I was enraged with the agency and the agents who confronted me. By the grace of God, at about the same time the enforcement measures of the IRS were greatest, I had been studying the Gospels, becoming persuaded Jesus knew what he was talking about. His counsel in his Sermon on the Mount to “love your enemies, pray for your persecutors” sounded apropos to my tax situation, so I began praying for the IRS and its agents. It worked! As a direct result, the IRS is no longer an enemy; none of its agents persecute me. Amazing! Miraculous! No? Because of the weasel ways of the IRS, its agents also talked to my wife about her “tax liability.” For several years she had been separately filing and paying taxes obediently. The IRS bogeymen coming after her scared the hell out of her. She was already unhappy with me for my own foray into tax resistance. When IRS agents contacted her and mentioned me, she was outraged at both them and me. While I was being moved from jail to jail during those 34 days, a process server was trying unsuccessfully to find me and serve me divorce papers. I’ve since learned that frightening spouses and other family members is a favorite tactic the IRS uses to prod tax protesters into “compliance” (viz., obedience). Our marriage was heading south at the time anyway, and the fact of our divorce, which I hadn’t wanted, turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Fortunately, our youngest child was close to adulthood at the time and soon headed off to college, so he only missed out on a resident father for a short period. It should go without question that forced or coerced taxes extort people’s property, so I do my level best not to willingly or voluntarily consume any amenities or benefits derived from said extortion. Do I use public roads? Of course, because I am essentially forced to do so by the government’s insidious monopoly of road building. Do I accept Social Security and Medicare benefits to which I am “legally entitled,” because for twenty years in my ignorant youth, before I wised up to the SS scheme, I paid SS taxes? In fact, no, I don’t. Merely because I was forced to pay into SS does not justify me relying on government to force others to pay for my benefits. By renouncing SS and Medicare benefits for 14 years, I have undoubtedly passed up a fair sum of money I could certainly use, but whatever the amount the trade-off has been well worth it. I am not a government dependent as so many in my age group are, and I am not an accessory to what I deem to be an extortion racket. Unlike many of my peers, I have retained my integrity and independence. Government dependency through one “social-welfare” program or another, like all dependencies—alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex or what have you—is a terrible plague inflicting many Americans. And then there is this, which I think is related: I have not been to a doctor nor taken a prescription drug in the last 34 years, with the single exception of taking about 10 amoxicillian (antibiotic) my wife had in the medicine cabinet when I had a reaction to a tick bite. Amazing? Miraculous? Certainly better than having Medicare (or Obama Care) and, as a consequence, needing it. So you see, Famspear, as a result of my relationship to employment taxes, neither paying the taxes nor voluntarily consuming tax-paid benefits, I think it is fair to say I can speak from a more “neutral point of view” on matters of taxation than those who do pay taxes or those who reap benefits from tax revenues or the tax laws. Wouldn’t you agree? Now a few words about my personal relationship with Irwin Schiff. I met Irwin when he spoke at a Libertarian Party state convention, I think it was in the early or mid-1980s. I subsequently saw him once or maybe twice in the next two decades when he came to my hometown to put on one of his seminars. I had lunch with him on one of these occasions. He picked up the check. As I recall, it was at that lunch I suggested to Irwin he run for the Libertarian Party’s nomination for President of the United States as a way to get his message about the income tax across to a larger audience. Then, by pure coincidence, I was in New Hampshire when Irwin came there to campaign in the primary for the LP nomination for president. I guess this would have been 1995. I had ridden my bike to NH to visit my daughter and grandson. When I learned Schiff would be speaking at a candidates’ forum in Manchester, NH, I had Wendy drive me over there to hear him. After he spoke, I met with Irwin who was traveling with an older gentleman friend of his from Pittsburgh whose name escapes me. They were travelling together in Schiff’s car and neither one of them liked driving those New Hampshire roads. Since I had time on my hands, I offered to be their chauffer if Irwin would cover my expenses. So for four or five days and nights solid I was with Irwin as he spoke in several NH towns, culminating with a speech at the Balsalms Grand Resort Hotel in Dixville Notch, NH. Irwin had made hotel reservations along the way in two-bedroom suites for him and his buddy, and I slept on the living-room couch. We ate breakfast, lunch and dinner together, occasionally joined by local LP members or fans of Irwin. What I learned about Irwin in those days was that he was a kind-hearted gentleman, generous with his money (great tipper), considerate of others, entertaining and extremely funny, often performing magic tricks for his lunch or dinner guests, for which he invariably paid the bill. He was an inveterate talker who would dominate conversations with the happy acquiescence of his companions because he had a lot of good things to say. Here is a website with three video tributes to Irwin Schiff. See especially the last one featuring an interview with Irwin explaining his thesis regarding the constitutional definition of income: (http://freeirwinschiff.org/) Unfortunately the interviewer didn’t know enough to shut up and let Schiff tell his story without interruption, instead Injecting many inane observations. YouTube provides many more Schiff videos. I never purchased any of Irwin Schiff’s tapes or other material except two or three of his books. (I also received one or two others as gifts.) When Schiff was under heavy attack from the government in the early years of the new century, I sent him unsolicited a check for $1000—no strings attached—and offered to come to Vegas to assist in his legal battles. I am an accomplished “writ writer,” and I thought I might be able to help him. I was a bit perturbed because I never received a thanks or even acknowledgement from Irwin, which was out of character, but today I understand that what the government was doing to him at the time would make even a saint neglectful of basic courtesies. With that as background on my tax situation, and on my personal relationship with Irwin Schiff, here are the problems I have with some of the things you have argued on this Irwin Schiff Wikipedia “talk page:” Famspear, you wrote: “In fact, as far as it is known, no follower of Irwin Schiff has ever been acquitted of federal tax crimes…he has the dubious distinction of having had the highest number of followers convicted.” This is a sophisticated or sophist’s argument in the sense defined at vocabulary.com: “A sophist is someone who makes good points about an issue — until you realize those points aren’t entirely true, like a political candidate who twists an opponent’s words or gives misleading facts during a speech.” (https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/sophist) Famspear, your argument is misleading because evidently only fourteen of Schiff’s “followers” were ever charged and convicted of tax crimes (http://tpgurus.wikidot.com/irwin-schiff), whereas Schiff likely had tens of thousands of “followers” who, like me, stopped paying the federal income tax but were never charged nor convicted of any crimes whatsoever. After all, combined sales of his books on the federal government’s income tax hoax and Social Security tax swindle, as he called them, totaled several hundreds of thousands. Also, there was a period of time when he was a repeat guest on popular national television and radio talk shows proclaiming his thesis that the income tax was illegal and need not be paid. Furthermore, Schiff was charged by the government with earning millions of dollars from the sales of his books and other anti-tax materials, so the number of his “followers” purchasing his advice had to be substantial. No other of the many “illegal-tax protester,” as the IRS used to call us before Congress told them to stop, has had anything close to the number of “followers” as Irwin Schiff had. Thus, fourteen is a miniscule number of convictions out of his many, many “followers.” When Schiff published his last book, THE FEDERAL MAFIA, HOW THE IT (viz., the IRS) ILLEGALLY IMPOSES AND UNLAWFULLY COLLECTS INCOME TAXES (https://www.amazon.com/Federal-Mafia-Illegally-Unlawfully-Collects/dp/0930374096) , and with tens of thousands of copies sold in addition to his other books and material, government tax enforcers evidently panicked and felt they had to crush Irwin Schiff to silence him, or be crushed by a major tax revolt already brewing The government, by means of a court injunction, prohibited Schiff or his publisher from selling his nonfiction book, an egregious violation of the 1st Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech and a free press, something the government has never done to any other author before or since. Then a federal judge, also presiding in violation of his ethical Code of Conduct, sentenced Irwin, who was 78 years old, to fourteen years in prison, which, as the judge knew it would, turned out to be a death sentence. A New York Times obituary provides a reasonably accurate portrait of a remarkable libertarian. (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/20/business/yourtaxes/irwin-schiff-fervent-opponent-of-federal-income-taxes-dies-at-87.html) Irwin died of cancer while still a prisoner shackled to a hospital bed on October 16, 2015. In a stirring tribute to this courageous American hero, former Congressman and Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul referred to Irwin as “a real gentleman,” “absolutely sincere and probably right on all his arguments about the Constitution and the tax code.” Quoting H.L. Menken, Paul suggested Schiff fit Menken’s description of, “The most dangerous man to any government…the man who is able to think things out without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable.” (http://www.ronpaul.com/2015-10-20/irwin-schiff-a-most-dangerous-man/) Famspear, you said of Schiff, in regards to those few of his “followers” who were jail by the federal government: “Helping to ruin other people’s lives is also something he should not have been proud of.” With all due respect, that is utter drivel? Schiff didn’t “help” send anyone to jail, rather he counseled people on how to avoid being imprisoned. He may have saved me from prison. The federal government alone imprisoned those people. To suggest that Schiff’s followers–your choice of words, not mine–followed Irwin like a bunch of lemmings is ludicrous. As someone who has had the temerity to go up against the IRS with its army of lawyers and armed agents, I can assure you that no one becomes an “illegal-tax protester” and Schiff “follower” without due consideration of the possibly adverse consequences. The threat of jail is one of the government’s well-advertised, primary weapons to frighten American taxpayers into servile obedience, forcing them to “voluntarily comply” with an undecipherable tax code exactly as they are told, and to just pay up without thinking or protesting. Evidently hundreds of millions of Americans are persuaded by the government’s intimidation, but that does not mean all, nor even a small minority of taxpayers would voluntarily comply if they weren’t threatened with jail and impoverishment. I hope readers of this page will watch the following video for a most revealing discussion with the former Majority Leader of the Senate, Harry Reid, on the idiotic oxymoron, “voluntary compliance.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7mRSI8yWwg) Famspear, I hope you’ll watch this video too. Harry Reid argues that being forced to pay taxes is voluntary. Harry “proves” being forced is acting voluntarily by repeatedly and forcefully declaring that being forced to do something is voluntary. Since he can’t logically dispute the factual, forcible nature of the income tax system, Harry practically shouts, “The fact of the matter is that our system IS A VOLUNTARY SYSTEM!” In my 45 years of experience dealing with beneficiaries of the tax defending the federal-income-tax hoax, I find Harry’s logic is precisely the logic behind all of the tax consumers’ justifications for using force to obtain their daily bread. Here are a two other video calling the legality and morality our income-tax system into question by reputable people including “reformed” IRS agents and supervisors. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcdNCz_7Qo0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqqksUEWAW8) Famspear, you argued here, “And, no, you’re not “correcting” the record. You’re repeating frivolous tax protester arguments. The idea that because federal judges are paid from the U.S. Treasury, they can’t be impartial in a Federal tax case is blatant nonsense. This is garbage that tax protesters have already tried in court. A judge’s impartiality cannot be “reasonably questioned” in a tax case merely because the judge is paid from the Treasury.” Famspear, Allow me to rewrite that last sentence of yours to reflect reality, so you can better see the absurdity of what you are claiming: “A judge cannot possibly be impartial in a tax case just because his income is derived from same taxes that are the subject matter of the case, or because his employer just happens to be one of the parties in every tax case. Fam, my argument isn’t frivolous. It is those federal Judges who treat their own ethical Code of Conduct as frivolous, because the judges’ own ethical code clearly mandates that they disqualify themselves from presiding in tax-protester cases. When they fail to do so, their frivolity becomes criminal. Famspear, with all due respect, your arguments here sound exactly like Harry Reid’s in that video. Unfortunately, the Code of Conduct for United States Judges disproves your contention, and I have quoted from it word for word without adding any “interpretation,” for the Code speaks for itself: “Canon 3, Section (C) Disqualification. (1) A judge shall disqualify himself or herself in a proceeding in which the judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned, including but not limited to instances in which:…(c) the judge knows that the judge, individually or as a fiduciary, or the judge’s spouse or minor child residing in the judge’s household, has a financial interest in the subject matter in controversy or in a party to the proceeding, or any other interest that could be affected substantially by the outcome of the proceeding;…” Let the readers of Wikipedia judge for themselves whether or not the Code’s mandate applies to cases where the judge is paid by one of the parties (the United States) using revenues from the very same taxes the other party is protesting, and whether or not a judge in such cases has “a financial interest in the subject matter [and is] a party to the proceeding.” (http://www.uscourts.gov/judges-judgeships/code-conduct-united-states-judges) By the way, Famspear, can you cite a case wherein, as you say, “This is garbage that tax protesters have already tried in court.” I’d like to know who those tax protesters you refer to are, because I was sure the argument originated with me about the time I revealed it on Quatloos (http://www.quatloos.com/Q-Forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=2635) back in 2008. There is a chance I mentioned it elsewhere or to a few friends, but I did not mention it to any of my fellow illegal-tax protesters. I just went back and read that Quatloos thread for at the third time, and it is self-evident that no one over at Quatloos was able to dispute my analysis, which I, like Socrates, put in the form of a question. Your reference to my position on this as “blatant nonsense” certainly appears to be hyperbole, for the best you or the boys and girls at Quatloos could come up to dispute my position was., “No! Federal judges are impartial.” Well, here are some federal judges who were not so impartial who also treated their ethical Code as a frivolous. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_investigations_of_United_States_federal_judges) Famspear, you said, “Nothing in the Code of Judicial Conduct [sic] supports the preposterous position you take.” Hmm, Famspear, as Ron Regan once famously said, “There you go again.” And again I must point out that the only position I’ve taken is taken verbatim from the Code of Conduct for US Judge. In other words, I have let the Code speak for itself—and for me. (But then, like you, I repeat myself.) Famspear, you said of yourself, “My opinions are unbiased and honest.” With all due respect, how can your opinions possibly be unbiased on whether or not federal income and employment taxes are constitutional when you admit here that you “have earned a fortune over the years in my tax practice?” Famspear, you said, “I use the term “fraudster” to describe Irwin Schiff. I can back that up with solid support.” Famspear, I am sure you can’t back up that contemptible charge. Exclusive of federal tax-evasion and fraud cases in which I have shown here that the judges were obviously biased and should have been disqualified for having a vested financial interest in the outcome of the cases before them and the prosecution was also the judges’ employer, Schiff was never convicted of fraud in any state or federal court. You present no evidence Schiff ever committed fraud. Nor have you any solid support for describing him elsewhere as “a con.” And please don’t put forth any material from the government’s case banning him from selling his book THE FEDERAL MAFIA, which was a flagrant violation of the First Amendment by the contemptible judge. The judge who issued that injunction was sitting in violation of his ethical Code and conspiring with the party seeking the injunction, the United States (the same party who was paying the judge) to silence Irwin Schiff because his books, tapes and speeches were attracting so many followers and thereby threatening to provoke a major tax revolt. Your use of pejorative epithets when referring to Irwin Schiff is a way of expressing your feelings and your emotions. That won’t work with me nor in a Wiki article. The federal government’s ban on Irwin’s book may in time be recognized as an egregious judicial crime equivalent to the Dred Scott vs. Sandford decision declaring the negro slave Scott to be Sandford’s property. “The Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford is unanimously denounced by scholars.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford) Famspear, you wrote above, “Now, re-read Schiff’s exact words, Ned: “…obviously, ‘’corporate profit” is the only thing that can be taxable today under the 1954 Code. ” That is utter baloney. Schiff was a stiff-necked, arrogant criminal. He continued to use this nonsensical argument, no matter how many times the courts ruled it to be erroneous, in his case and in many other cases.” Famspear, you also refer to Schiff’s impeccably correct understanding of the Internal Revenue Code with such epithets as “hilariously idiotic,” “utter baloney,” and “nonsensical,” but you do not attempt to rationally dispute Schiff’s contention. You justify calling Schiff’s arguments such names by citing the fact that “many times the courts ruled (Schiff) to be wrong.” Those courts you refer to were all presided over by compromised judges, and they all denied him the opportunity to elaborate his position to the juries or show them the Supreme Court cases he relied on for his position. Furthermore, not only do you take a few snippets of Schiff’s long and detailed explanation of what “income” is in the IR Code pursuant to Supreme Court rulings, you offer no evidence to show that Schiff was wrong in his understanding of what constitutes “income” pursuant to rulings of the Supreme Court. Can you substantiate wherein Schiff was wrong by showing me what the Supreme Court has said constitutes income for purposes of the IR Code, in contradistinction to Schiff’s understanding? You would be doing me a favor if you could also show me what statute or provision of the IR Code makes a person liable to pay a tax on one’s “income,” whatever that means. Famspear. If you were fair minded and wanted to understand Schiff’s position, you would read Schiff’s book, the Great Income Tax Hoax, all 565 pages including many supporting documents and evidence in support of his charges against the government, and criticize it. For you to cherry pick a few lines out of context from Schiff’s elaborate understanding and thorough explanation of one of the most complex matters of law, and cite those few words as representing his magisterial exposé of what the government has done to its taxpayer-victims, and why he accurately calls it a hoax is, in a word, absurd. Famspear, you wrote, “Schiff was a con artist. He claimed to believe that his writings on Federal tax law were correct—yet he was caught moving and hiding assets to evade having to pay taxes.” Fam, This is one of the most transparently sophist arguments the tax establishment has used against Schiff and other tax protesters. Schiff obviously wasn’t moving assets to evade taxes because he didn’t owe any taxes. He was trying to preserve his property from thieves. Schiff didn’t believe he owed a dime in taxes, but he knew from prior experience that this wouldn’t deter the IRS from taking his property without due process of law. After all, the IRS had previously taken about a quarter of a million dollars of Schiff’s royalties as author of HOW ANYONE CAN STOP PAYING INCOME TAXES from his publisher, Simon & Shuster, without any pretense of affording him due process before grabbing his money. With that experience in mind, it would be insane for Schiff—or anyone else–not to try to hide his wealth from a roving band of thieves. Rest assured that when my own boat comes in, I’ll tell the captain to steer clear of these shores where pirates abound and are in charge, and dock it at my residential pier in the Turk and Caicos Islands (a tax haven). Famspear, that is all for now. Thank you for engaging. I’m grateful to you for drawing my attention to some of the desideratum of being a Wiki editor, a task to which I had previously given little or no thought, even though I had blunderingly made a few edits. Now that am a bit enlightened, thanks to you, I may get more involved. I notice you’ve been quite active as an editor particularly regarding articles on taxes and tax protesters, injecting the slant of one who has made a fortune from the tax laws. It is evident that the “other side” of tax issues has been poorly represented if at all on Wiki. If I live long enough and find the time, maybe I can correct that by bringing some balance to tax and tax protester articles from my obviously more neutral and enlightened point of view. P.S. You are welcome to tell your friends at the IRS that I don’t have medical insurance either, as required by the Affordable Care Act’s legislation. I’d welcome an opportunity to show that enforcement of ACA is also unconstitutional and should be unenforceable if the Constitution means anything, but then again… RIP, Irwin Schiff, you will be missed by liberty lovers. Note: The Constitution of the United States empowers the government to collect two species of taxes: direct and indirect. And it limits the manner of collection of those taxes. Direct taxes are required to be apportioned among the citizens of the several states proportionally according to the most recent census. Indirect taxes must be uniform throughout all of the states. Although the difference between the two species of taxes and the reasons for the different modes of collecting them was well known and clearly understood by the Founding Fathers and the Framers of the Constitution, today not one lawyer in 10,000, whether practicing constitutional law, sitting in Congress, serving in the Department of Justice, or sitting on a federal bench, can correctly explain the difference between the two taxes as understood by the Framers, nor explain why the two different modes of collecting them were prescribed by the framers. Go ahead. Ask your lawyer friends. In a future Liberty.me article, I will have Irwin Schiff, the most knowledgeable historian of U.S. taxes ever until his recent death, explain the differences.

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https://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/germany-131-7/#commentsSat, 02 Jan 2016 04:31:56 +0000https://jesusontaxes.liberty.me/?p=69GERMANS 13:1-7 My dear Jewish brothers and sisters, Let every person be subject to Hitler and the governing Nazi authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and the Nazi authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Whoever resists Nazi authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For the Nazi rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the Nazi authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive the Nazi’s approval, for Hitler is God’s servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the Gestapo does not wield the sword in vain. Hitler is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore, one must be subject to Hitler, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience. For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the Nazis are God’s servants, busy with this very thing. Pay to all what is due to them—taxes to whom taxes are do, revenue to whom revenue is due. Respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due. Sincerely, Rabbi Benjamin Roth Sachsenhousen, Germany January 15, 1938 This letter was sent by Rabbi Roth to the members of his synagogue in Stuttgart from a Nazi “labor” camp shortly after he was arrested as an enemy of the state for his rather open condemnation of Hitler and the Nazis. The letter was, of course, first opened and read by the prison’s Gestapo censors. It was allowed to be mailed thanks only to the Nazi/Hitler-flattering content. It was seen immediately by all but one of the members of the Rabbi’s synagogue for the irony that it was meant to be. It inspired many members to do exactly the opposite of what the Rabbi seemed to be directing them to do, knowing that is what he really wanted of them. Resistance to taxes was higher among members of his synagogue than anywhere in Germany, and many went to their deaths for resisting Hitler’s taxes. The one member who took his letter at face value was Ike Z., a rather dull honeydipper. When the letter was read to him he took it to heart and immediately joined the Nazi Party. However, when it was discovered that he was a Jew he was immediately shot dead by the Gestapo.